{"id":2119,"date":"2020-12-13T19:06:54","date_gmt":"2020-12-13T19:06:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.radiofree.org\/?p=138865"},"modified":"2020-12-13T19:06:54","modified_gmt":"2020-12-13T19:06:54","slug":"closures-cuts-revival-and-rebirth-how-covid-reshaped-nz-media-2020","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/2020\/12\/13\/closures-cuts-revival-and-rebirth-how-covid-reshaped-nz-media-2020\/","title":{"rendered":"Closures, cuts, revival and rebirth \u2013 how covid reshaped NZ media 2020"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/a>The sale of Stuff returned the country\u2019s largest digital news platform and 12 national and regional newspapers to local ownership. Image: The Conversation\/Shutterstock<\/div>\n
\n

ANALYSIS:<\/strong> By Merja Myllylahti<\/a>, Auckland University of Technology<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

When Bauer Media announced the closure<\/a> of its New Zealand magazine operation just a week into level 4 lockdown in early April, things looked ominous for local media. Revenues and newsrooms were already contracting. It was hard to see things improving.<\/p>\n

However, while the full picture is still unclear, it seems most of New Zealand\u2019s TV, radio and print outlets have come through the covid-19 crisis bruised and battered \u2014 but alive. Sadly, an estimated 637 media jobs have disappeared in the process.<\/p>\n

In short, 2020 has left the New Zealand media market profoundly restructured.<\/p>\n

Perhaps most significantly, as the 10th New Zealand Media Ownership Report<\/a> shows, there are now more independent news outlets in the market than at any time in the past decade.<\/p>\n

That trend was underscored by Australian Nine Entertainment selling<\/a> (for NZ$1) its New Zealand subsidiary Stuff<\/em> to CEO Sinead Boucher. The sale returned the country\u2019s largest digital news platform and 12 national and regional newspapers to local ownership.<\/p>\n

The magazine massacre<\/strong>
Many of these structural changes in the country\u2019s media might have happened anyway, but the pandemic certainly accelerated some decisions.<\/p>\n

A case in point was Bauer. The company blamed its closure on \u201cthe severe economic impact of covid-19\u201d, but it had been facing declining advertising revenue well before the pandemic hit. This was made worse<\/a> when magazines were not included among essential goods and services during the lockdown in March and April.<\/p>\n

Bauer also closed titles<\/a> in Australia, but in June the company\u2019s Australasian magazines were sold<\/a> to Australian private equity group Mercury Capital. The new owner resumed publication of Woman\u2019s Day, New Zealand Woman\u2019s Weekly, Australian Women\u2019s Weekly NZ, Your Home & Garden, NZ Listener<\/em> and Kia Ora<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Later, flagship current affairs titles North & South<\/em> and Metro<\/em> were sold<\/a> to independent publishers and relaunched in November.<\/p>\n

\n

#BREAKING<\/a> Bauer Media is set to close \u2014the publisher of the Listener, Woman\u2019s Day, NZ Woman\u2019s Weekly, North & South is closing its doors permanently.https:\/\/t.co\/wxDykUxLB5<\/a><\/p>\n

\u2014 nzherald (@nzherald) April 1, 2020<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

A government lifeline<\/strong>
You might say the country\u2019s media survived the pandemic with a little help from friends \u2014 and even frenemies: the government, readers and Google.<\/p>\n

In April, the government announced<\/a> a $50 million media crisis support package \u2014 the lion\u2019s share went to broadcasting.<\/p>\n

But most of the country\u2019s news outlets received support from the government\u2019s wage subsidy scheme, including NZ Media and Entertainment (NZME) and Stuff,<\/em> the two largest print and online news publishers.<\/p>\n

Without that government support it\u2019s clear many news outlets would have been more severely affected. The NZ Herald<\/em> received $8.6 million in wage subsidy and Stuff<\/em> $6.2 million. State-owned broadcaster TVNZ received $5.9 million and the private equity-owned MediaWorks $3.6 million.<\/p>\n

The scheme also kept many smaller digital news outlets afloat, and some even expanded.<\/p>\n

The Google factor<\/strong>
Some news outlets received additional funding from Google\u2019s Journalism Emergency Relief Fund<\/a> \u2014 slightly ironic, given the impact of the digital giant on traditional media advertising revenues (hence the \u201cfrenemy\u201d tag).<\/p>\n

A total of 76 news organisations across the Pacific benefited from Google\u2019s \u201cshort-term relief\u201d. While smaller publishers welcomed it, the money spent per outlet was unlikely to make any serious dent in Google\u2019s budget \u2014 it was more a gesture of goodwill.<\/p>\n

For example, Queenstown-based non-profit media outlet Crux<\/em><\/a> received $5000. To put that in context, in the first half of 2020 search engines \u2014 mainly Google \u2014 received<\/a> $361 million in digital advertising revenue in New Zealand, along with the social media platforms gobbling up 72 percent of the country\u2019s total digital advertising spend.<\/p>\n

For its part, Google says<\/a> it has done more for the country\u2019s journalism than providing financial aid, and has \u201ctrained almost 600 journalists in dozens of newsrooms across the country\u201d.<\/p>\n

Higher traffic and increased donations<\/strong>
News companies also got by with a little help from their readers during the pandemic. The NZ Herald<\/em> reported<\/a> \u201coverall print-digital readership [\u2026] at record levels and newspaper readership [at] its highest in almost a decade\u201d.<\/p>\n

Independent digital news outlets Newsroom<\/em><\/a> and The Spinoff<\/a><\/em> also reported spikes in readership and donations or subscriptions. Web analytics confirm overall news site traffic increased quite substantially during the pandemic.<\/p>\n

According to data analysts SimilarWeb<\/a>, total visits to the NZ Herald<\/em> website grew from 36.5 million in May to 46.4 million in August. Similarly, total visits to the Stuff<\/em> site went from 39.7 million in May to 43 million in August, while The Spinoff<\/em> grew from 2.4 million in May to 2.9 million in July.<\/p>\n

These positive developments were offset by plenty of negatives, however. Many commercial newsrooms shrank substantially, with hundreds of jobs lost. The full effects of the pandemic will not be known for some time, and what the industry will look like in 12 months is hard to predict.<\/p>\n

What is clear, though, is that more government support will be needed in the coming years if New Zealand wants a healthy media system as part of its democracy.\"The<\/p>\n

Dr Merja Myllylahti<\/em><\/a> is co-director of JMAD Research Centre, Auckland University of Technology.<\/a> This article is republished from The Conversation<\/a> under a Creative Commons licence. Read the original article<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Print<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n

This post was originally published on Radio Free<\/a>. <\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The sale of Stuff returned the country\u2019s largest digital news platform and 12 national and regional newspapers to local ownership. Image: The Conversation\/Shutterstock ANALYSIS: By Merja Myllylahti, Auckland\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":33,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[698,338,432,5,365,387,6,699,700,94,701,255,4,702,703,704,705,358,12,14,706,707,404],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2119"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/33"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2119"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2119\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2120,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2119\/revisions\/2120"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2119"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2119"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2119"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}