After too much cheese, Gabi reflects on the places journalists go for stories.

Two weeks ago, an invite landed in my inbox. Pizza Hut was turning 50, and they wanted me, a not-food-writer with a sensitive stomach, at the buffet celebrations. Presumptuously, I looked up from my screen and asked the tippy-tappers around me, “are we all going to the Pizza Hut buffet?” No-one else had received the invite. Jealousy spread like nits through the office. My claim to unlimited pizza was taken to a dark room questioned under a spotlight, most vigorously by myself, who is currently on an unhinged and not recommended journey to know if my body is capable of having abs. 

Invites to random events are no stranger to the journalist inbox. Just two weeks ago a Spinoff contingent made up about 90% of the attendees at a Snapchat breakfast. We were absolutely filled with glee to be greeted with activities like spin the wheel and get free socks, choose your own patches for a tote bag, and play with Snapchat filters on a screen approximately a thousand times the size of a phone. There, we found out that nearly 95% of young New Zealanders are using the app we’d all deleted from our phone years ago.

Sometimes, the invites are self-inflicted and entirely without glee. In 2017 Madeleine Chapman sent herself off to attend a Max Key DJ set as a paying VIP guest. She lived to tell the tale, but also to deeply regret it. More recently, I sat through a freezing radical leftist meeting with only two miniature quiches to keep me going through hours of talking. Needless to say, no green eyed parasites bit my colleagues’ heads that week. 

Being a journalist can be like having a backstage pass. When I wrote about our plasma supply, I got a two hour tour through the labs (so many labs), freezers and fridges of the blood centre. When I wrote about armyworms, I was let into Plant & Foods’ “bug shop” where they rear colonies of bugs for decades. I usually turn up with a tiny red 3B1 notebook in one pocket, a dictaphone in the other, and a camera slung around my neck in the hopes of capturing what many people will never see first-hand. 

But not every visit or event turns into a story. On Wednesday at 6:30pm, I grabbed a can of low-carb Tiger on my way into the Pizza Hut buffet. The DJ lined up a playlist where the Spice Girls were followed by Nirvana. Custom leadlight lampshades on the tables spelled out Pizza Hut, just in case we’d forgotten where we were. The napkins, placemats and coasters blinked out the same two words. The pizzas were out, oiling up underneath heat lamps, but no one was serving themselves. Instead the phones were up, capturing the moment. 

For the price of a few pizzas, Pizza Hut had every food influencer in town making them content, many of which feature one certain Spinoff writer demolishing slice after slice of classic cheese pizza in the background. The Herald, Stuff and 1News had already run stories about the buffet. Washing the beige mass down with chilled red wine, I decided not to write about a multinational pizza restaurant chain. I could just eat their pizza.

This week’s episode of Behind the Story

Books editor Claire Mabey is deeply embedded in the publishing sector in Aotearoa, so she clearly remembers the shock when Narrative Muse was awarded $500,000 of arts funding to boost sales of New Zealand books in 2021. In a closely connected sector, no-one had heard of the tech start-up, or any of the people behind it, before. For months Claire has been canvasing the industry to see what impact that half-a-million dollars has had, if any. We started the week with her investigation, The half-a-million-dollar decision that still haunts the book industry.

Claire joined me on Behind the Story (now with video!) to discuss why that huge sum was awarded to Narrative Muse in the first place, and why it caused such a stir. Listen wherever you get your podcasts.

So what have readers spent the most time reading this week?

• Claire Mabey’s cover story, The half-a-million-dollar decision that still haunts the book industry, which we spoke about on Behind the Story, takes out the top spot this week

• When Matthew Hooton delivered a torrential monologue railing against his former colleague, Don Brash on The Working Group politics podcast, our founder Duncan Greive’s ears perked up
• The story of how a $1.50 coffee became a priceless lesson in ethical journalism for our newest staff writer Lyric Waiwiri-Smith
• Claiming she sold her car to pay the bill is just one example of Tory Whanau’s terrible political radar, says Wellington editor Joel MacManus in his weekly column, Windbag
• As above, my explainer on the fight over Obela in New Zealand, which is just getting started

Reader feedback of the week

• The crackdown on nangs, explained

“My partner and I use about one recharge per week, for our whipped cream dispenser (and save and drop the empties at a metal recycler). As a precaution (against the muddled policies of the current coalition of clowns and hypocrites), we have now stockpiled 2 years worth (not an ideal solution). When we eventually wish to purchase more, I’m assuming we will get vetted as potential criminals.”

— BraunP

• On Dear Emerald Fennell, please don’t Saltburnify Wuthering Heights

“The only person I want to see play Heathcliff is 1985 Daniel Day Lewis.  That would be incredible.”

— krystal

Pick up where this leaves off

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