Newshub's investigations reporter Michael Morrah reporting on the impending demise of his own news organisation on Newshub at 6. Photo: screenshot / Newshub at 6
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Warner Bros. Discovery’s decision to shut down Newshub was met with mourning within the media - and also concern about what could replace it in the media ecosystem.
Melissa Chan-Green opened the AM Show on Thursday by extinguishing the hopes of her viewers.
"You've likely seen the news by now that our company is proposing to shut down Newshub from June. Some people have been asking 'does that affect AM too? We're all part of the same family," she said. "So yes that does affect AM too."
Her co-host Lloyd Burr added his own eulogy, though he spiced it up with a small, and quite visceral note of hope.
"When the chips are down we get through it," he said. "John Campbell once said we're tighter than a fish's bum."
It later emerged that senior Newshub staff would be trying to save the service, presumably on a fish-bum budget.
The revelation that AM would be part of the Newshub shutdown wouldn’t have been news to anyone who had been listening to Heather du Plessis-Allan on Newstalk ZB the previous day.
She got that fact confirmed from the horse’s mouth, by Warner Bros. Discovery’s Asia-Pacific president James Gibbons, and his revelation left her with one burning question on her mind.
"What are you going to do with all the equipment?" she asked.
Other potential lines of inquiry include what are you going to do about all these people who are about to lose their jobs?
And what are we all going to do about the loss of media diversity and competition?
Journalists, including Newshub’s Amelia Wade, did put those sorts of questions to the broadcasting minister, Melissa Lee, who said don’t worry about it, audiences have still got Sky.
"There's Sky as well. There's a whole lot of other medias about," she said.
Just one problem with all this though: Sky’s news broadcast is supplied by Newshub, which doesn’t make it a great alternative to content produced by Newshub.
ACT’s David Seymour, a shareholding minister in TVNZ in this coalition, posited one idea for fixing the paucity of competition in broadcast news – weakening TVNZ’s market position by demanding it return a larger dividend to the government.
"It may well mean they have to make a return on equity just like every other business in New Zealand is required to do," he said.
Sadly, TVNZ’s dominance in free-to-air TV is far from Newshub’s only problem.
Newshub's proposed demise comes in the context of a global downturn which has decimated the media’s ad revenue, much of which had already been hoovered up by tech giants even before the economy went down the gurgler.
Newshub is far from alone in suffering in those conditions.
On Friday, TVNZ reported a significant loss and a 13.5 percent slump in income in the past year.
The Herald also revealed WBD had proposed a shared news gathering service between the TVNZ, Newshub and RNZ - similar to the former New Zealand Press Association - that would have seen all three organisations supplied with stories. TVNZ rejected the proposal two days later.
Vice Media, which once boasted its own award-winning New Zealand bureau and a global valuation of US$5.7 billion, shut down news operations this week. Legacy outlets such as The Washington Post and the LA Times have been laying off staff, while publications like Sports Illustrated, Business Insider, and Pitchfork are shells of their former selves.
Photo: RNZ/Marika Khabazi
TVNZ’s business correspondent Katie Bradford summarised the dismal economic conditions facing the industry on 1News on Wednesday.
"People aren't spending as much," she said. "We see it with advertising with Newshub. There is not the demand out there. There is not the consumption out there."
On X, formerly Twitter, Reality Check Radio host and social media commentator Chantelle Baker skipped over those structural issues and claimed Newshub’s real problem was that it hadn’t been remotely interested in integrity and investigative journalism over the last few years.
Newshub’s journalism was pivotal in Teina Pora being freed after being convicted of a murder he didn’t commit. It exposed flaws in the investigation into Peter Ellis, highlighted alleged workplace abuses on offshore fishing vessels, uncovered lax practices in New Zealand’s MIQ system, and more recently shone the spotlight on the exploitation of migrant workers.
The journalists who worked to break those stories might take issue with an internet radio host’s assertion that they’re not interested in integrity or investigation.
But Baker’s tweet is at least indicative of another real problem with the media’s business model.
Its audiences have migrated online along with its ad revenue, where they’re met with a range of competing news sources including influencers like Baker or outlets such as the privately bankrolled digital startup The Platform or the Voices For Freedom-aligned Reality Check Radio.
Some of those outlets and commentators might make spurious claims, like for instance that Newshub is shutting down because it isn’t interested in integrity or investigative journalism, but they’re still finding large audiences thanks to algorithms which prioritise engagement over factual accuracy.
Even without algorithmic juicing, these sometimes less than credible outlets have a big advantage over that of traditional news organisations which have to pay for journalists, equipment and transmission fees: their content is cheap as chips.
Stuff’s owner Sinead Boucher outlined the traditional media’s struggle to compete for advertising and audience eyeballs in the social media age at a Parliamentary hearing last week.
She said several media executives had told her their companies were "clinging on by their fingertips" and AI could make it worse.
"This is looking increasingly like an extinction-level event."
At the same committee, RNZ chief Paul Thompson joined a host of commentators in warning that the media’s decay is an existential threat to our political system.
"If we don't tell and own our stories, if New Zealanders don't have a range of media to come to ... they will get the information from somewhere else and it will break our democracy," he said.
On Wednesday, our ability to tell our own stories got a bit weaker.
Newshub’s journalists have shone a light on some dark corners of society and provided an incisive check on our politicians.
But it’s not necessarily just what’s being lost that counts – it’s what’s taking its place.