Warner Bros. Discovery told staff today that there is no deal “at this stage” with any third parties to provide a pared-back news service. Video / Corey Fleming and Cheree Kinnear
Media commentator Duncan Greive warns New Zealand is fast approaching the point where we “see what a society without news looks like” unless decisive action is taken to preserve the industry.
Greive, who co-founded news and culture website The Spinoff in 2014, says “the revenue fall-off is now very baked-in” for journalism – so if we “want to continue to have news as a society”, something must be done.
“It [the revenue drop] has been going for 10, 12 years, and it doesn’t look anything like it’s going to turn around,” he told Newstalk ZB’s Real Life with John Cowan on Sunday night.
“You’re approaching an inflection point where either this thing atrophies and falls away, and you see what a society without news looks like – or you do something about it.”
Greive says there are many different forces causing the New Zealand media industry’s financial struggle, but that ultimately it’s a consequence of Kiwis shifting from more traditional forms of media to digital platforms over many years.
“TV, newspapers, magazines and radio used to have a near-monopoly on audience attention and advertising inventory – and they were all fantastic businesses. That was the governing reality that made media quite a profitable business for decades,” he explained to Cowan.
“When the internet came along, it started to gradually – and then quite quickly – take audiences from those more traditional mediums. And it created advertising products, which decoupled news and professionally-made entertainment from advertising.”
For social media companies, there is virtually no cost to create content – because their users generate it for them.
This week saw confirmation that Newshub would be shuttered after 35 years. Photo / Alex Burton
“The idea that you would run a TV station where none of the people who made the shows got any of the revenue that you made from advertising would be absurd. But that’s what we have with Instagram and TikTok and so on.”
This puts these companies at odds with most traditional news organisations, which are heavily regulated in comparison, explained Greive.
“Part of the reason news is expensive to make is you have to make sure that something is true, and if you’re wrong, there are huge penalties. Whereas someone can say something on Facebook and it could be completely false. It’s a strange thing.
TVNZ staffers outside the organisation's HQ. Photo / Sylvie Whinray
“It used to be that if you were making money from advertising on a platform, you were responsible for the consequences of it, and now that’s no longer the case. That’s a long-running inequity that exists, but there doesn’t seem to be any political will to look at it.”
In a wide-ranging interview with Cowan, Greive also spoke about how he got his start in journalism, why he launched The Spinoff, and how a series of infographics about Covid produced in its newsroom came to be used by the World Health Organisation.
Real Life is a weekly interview show where John Cowan speaks with prominent guests about their life, upbringing, and the way they see the world. Tune in Sundays from 7:30pm on Newstalk ZB or listen to the latest full interview here.
