Hawke's Bay Today's new editor Chris Hyde has spent close to 10 years in regional newsrooms.
Hawke's Bay Today's new editor Chris Hyde has spent close to 10 years in regional newsrooms.
Tēnā koutou katoa. Monday was my first day as editor of the Hawke's Bay Today.
First impressions aren't my strong point so it would have been a nervy day for me - a not particularly fresh-faced 32-year-old - if I had been walking into a room full of strangers.
But I wasn't. I know well the tight-knit crew that brings your daily dose of news, views and puzzles together.
From the middle of 2018 to the beginning of 2022, I was news director for this organisation, working with and under the guidance of then editor Craig Cooper.
Our team gave you some good reads over those three and a bit years. We showcased the beauty of this region and its occasional warts. I also think we put a few bricks in the wall that kept Covid out of our region for so long.
Now I'm back from a short stint as a reporter at a rival organisation, and I'm sitting at Craig's desk - he's off to a new role within NZME.
I'm told I'm the youngest to have sat in this chair. It's an odd feeling, but hopefully I'll get used to it. If I'm half as good as Craig was at this, things will be just fine.
As news director I worked largely behind the scenes, so consider this column as a bit of a mihi.
I'm a Pākehā boy, born and raised in rural Timaru. I find city life exhilarating, and I get a huge thrill out of travelling, but home always feels closer when I'm in the quiet of the whenua.
Timaru, a great place to grow up.
For close to a decade now I've worked in the trenches that are regional New Zealand newsrooms.
First it was Palmerston North, then back to Timaru, and after a stint in Wellington I moved here to raise my daughters.
I love local newspapers, even though working for them seems to have taken most of the hair off the top of my head. In my eyes, they are the heart of our nation's journalism.
That heart's had its struggles over the past decade, but it still beats strong, bringing you your local news, day in, day out.
We're going to keep doing that here, in mostly the same way. We've got the newsiest region in the country, so we'll never be short of stories to share.
Of course, I've got a few things I'd like to achieve here, one of which is that I also want our rangatahi to read these pages, either online or in print.
They're our future leaders, but at the moment their eyeballs are increasingly glued to a social media ecosystem that exists to be a maelstrom.
Perhaps we can turn their gaze instead to something that's accurate, informative, interesting - even good for them - all created by someone who lives just down the road.
