What's the point in Melissa Lee?

It's the end of the News as we know it.

While making coffee this morning I listened to Paddy Gower from Newshub being interviewed on RNZ. It was painful listening. His hurt and love for that organisation, its closure confirmed yesterday, quite evident.

As we do when something really matters, he wasn’t giving up hope. Paddy talked about the taonga that Three News/Newshub has been over the years and the value that it’s flagship 6pm bulletin still surely had in terms of attracting advertisers. Even in a market where such revenue has significantly declined.

He spoke of the proposal put forward by a group of senior journalists, led by Michael Morrah, that offered a ruthless proposal to save the newsroom. One that had no room in it for Paddy, and yet he backed it because as one of the senior people there - that’s what you do. You try to save others and the work that you believe in.

One thing that’s been clear through this whole saga is just how much Newshub means to the people that work there. It’s not simply a place where they earn their living, it’s something important that they’re part of which matters in people’s lives.

Telling our stories, is a phrase that sometimes seems overused, but it matters. Imagine our country without our stories being told. I don’t know about you, but that sounds pretty bloody awful to me.

Having a single voice telling the nation what is happening, with a single political editor framing the narrative the nation receives, sounds pretty bad too. But unless something changes really soon then three months from now the choice of which evening news to watch is going to get a whole lot easier, for those still making such a choice.

In a shocking day for local media we saw not only the confirmation that Newshub was going, but also that TVNZ’s Sunday programme would close. Leaving precious little on our screens in terms of investigative journalism and documentaries.

The traditional approach of free content, paid for my advertising, is no longer able to sustain our current model of news delivery.

Pretty much everything else, be it movies, television series, or music, have gone behind a paywall to be paid for by a subscription model. Which takes some getting used to, but might be beneficial in the long term.

The reality of corporate sponsorship in our media through advertising is that it must inevitably constrain what is said and the way it is said. Under such a model upsetting the sponsors is a concern and it would be naive to think that it wasn’t sometimes a consideration. But it shouldn’t be.

In his More Than a Feilding substack yesterday David Slack talked about the future of the industry, and has kindly allowed me to share this part of that paid newsletter.

“The collapse of the advertising model leaves journalism in need of reinvention. Possibly along very stripped-down lines. You maybe start with a bunch of people who can ask good questions, create sparkling prose, and/or sparkling interviews and/or compelling footage, and you put it all on a website and hope you can persuade enough people to pay for it. Ideally, you find a way to do that at a scale without turning into the kind of lumbering beast that has proven to be impossibly costly to feed.”

Others will no doubt fill the vacuum, most people do want to know what is going on.

I quite like the idea of Substackers at press conferences. Can you imagine, having people like David Slack, or Emily Writes, asking the questions rather than the nonsense that people like Jason Walls come up with?

That’d be good. But Substackers don’t have the resources to provide a full news service, and I’m sorry to mention it but if our model of bringing you coverage is going to survive it needs people to lose that mentality of expecting content for free, rather than paying a small amount to subscribe.

Most days I send out a newsletter which thousands of people read, but only a relatively small percentage of people pay for. There are of course those in a position where they simply have no disposable income, which is why I keep much of my content free - I don’t want anyone putting themselves in hardship.

But in between those who contribute, and those who can’t, there are an awful lot of people who could. Like any media offering this kōrero needs revenue to survive. By subscribing you’re paying for me to do this, so if you enjoy what you read from me, and can afford a couple of dollars a week to support it, then please do.

The way things are going it will only be those with vested interests who are providing people with the information they receive. And that’s bad enough already with some of the right wing platforms that exist, and the direct messaging from political parties.

Yep. On a day when we lost a fairly sizeable chunk of our media, the ACT party had the solution. You could get the news straight from them. Brilliant!

How ghastly, gloating on such a sad day for Aotearoa with so many good journalists losing their jobs.

Especially given the role that the three coalition parties have played in reducing the public’s trust in our media. With ridiculous accusations that the industry support provided by the previous government was a bribe, rather than a recognition of the importance of our news media.

By and large I think our mainstream media are pretty trustworthy. Sure I don’t like the tabloid approach they take sometimes, the emotive headlines - but the reality is those attract attention, and you can’t tell people anything if they’re not watching.

It might surprise you but the first news site I check most mornings is Newshub. They don’t provide the same level of investigative journalism as other platforms, but they are very good at doing what is says on the tin - covering the news.