Our new columnist, the Insider Insider, takes a peek inside the insiderest media operation of all time.
The proliferation of insiderness at the New Zealand Herald appears unstoppable, with the unveiling this morning of Society Insider, by Ricardo Simich. It joins a bustling neighbourhood of insiders at the nation’s biggest and most insidery newspaper.
Other insiders debuted in the last year and a half include the Sports Insider, the Property Insider, the Beauty Insider and the Tech Insider. A Herald insider told the Spinoff Insider Insider: “We’ve never been insiderer.”
The original insider – “daddy insider” to insiders – is, of course, the Media Insider. Launched in March 2023, the Media Insider promised “inside detail from the world of media”, and, boy, did it deliver. The Media Insider, also known as “pretty much the entire home page of nzherald.co.nz on Fridays”, written by Shayne Currie, has since spawned more insiders than an agoraphobia convention. “Shayne Currie” is understood to be a pseudonym.
There was once a Business Insider, but the last column published under that byline we can find was in February 2022. Insiders have offered conflicting explanations for the disappearance to the Insider Insider: the Business Insider was either a victim of insidercide (pushed off a cliff by the Media Insider); or the Business Insider was sacked after spending too long outdoors.
It is unlikely the Society Insider will be the last insider to join the Insiderverse. The Herald’s parliamentary press gallery is understood to be deadlocked over whether to relaunch as the Baseball Insiders or the Waistline (beltway insiders).
The Summer edition will be rebranded Inside a Shark and all coverage of songs for children bylined to the I Know an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Spider It Wiggled and Jiggled and Tickled Insider.
The opinion pages are set to be called the Broadsider, the comments threads rebranded as the Please Reconsider and the editorial as Insider GPT.
Plans to launch a share market column, Trading Insider, are said to have been dropped.
Rival media outlets are furious about the ceaseless insider expansionism. A Stuff insider told the Insider Insider: “I bet they’re just like Tom Cruise and Matt Dillon from The Outsiders except at their desks with cups of tea and biscuits,” before garbling a series of inane slogans like, “Ideas don’t grow on trees and neither does money.”
Patrick Gower said the growth of the insider kingdom was “really fucking good news”, before adding, “fuck,” and, “fuckfuck?”
There was no one available for comment from TVNZ owing to the state-owned broadcaster having been reduced to one employee, Weatherman Dan Corbett, left alone waving his hands on a YouTube channel, with every other output axed for lack of profitability.
An RNZ insider said they had not noticed the growth of the insider franchise because they were focused on developments in the P Diddy story.
A Spinoff insider said it would not be responding because it had its head lodged inside its backside.
The Insider Insider is excited about the new Society Insider column, which is expected to cover a range of issues including child poverty, social mobility and community housing, standing as a bold repudiation to Margaret Thatcher’s proclamation that “there is no such thing as society”. It marks a departure for Simich, who previously helmed the Spy column, which focused on a range of issues in the state surveillance and national security space.
As told to Toby Manhire
