Could you manage this?

MediaApril 13, 2020

A note for new (or newish) readers of The Spinoff

Founder

Could you manage this?

Over the past month, The Spinoff audience has grown dramatically. Managing editor Duncan Greive explains what The Spinoff is, and how best to use it.

The Covid-19 crisis has been so ubiquitous and upending that it’s hard to think of anything that will not in some way be transformed by what we’ve witnessed. So it is for us at The Spinoff, a small media operation in a small country, covering New Zealand current affairs and culture across text, podcasts and video.

A month ago we were in our office, writing a little about Covid-19, and a lot about other things. Now we, like the media in New Zealand and throughout the world, are consumed by a huge and complex story that will run for years and leave a mark on all who live through it.

The purpose of this note is to welcome those new and newish to The Spinoff, to show you around and generally help you understand what we’re about. This is because it’s abundantly clear that our audience has massively expanded over the past month. Over the past four weeks, our site has seen 9m pageviews, with tens of millions more encountering it – Siouxsie Wiles and Toby Morris’s brilliant animations especially – on social media. While many will be pre-existing readers, our audience (per analytics from Parse.ly) tripled from 1.5m to 4.5m over the last 28 days, and is staying that way. This is backed up by other metrics, including memberships (more on that shortly), which have more than doubled over the same span.

If you’ve been around a while, much of this will be familiar, so feel free to tune out (or drop me a line to tell me what I’ve forgotten). But if you’re a relatively recent reader, here are some things to help you get familiar with The Spinoff.

What we are

The Spinoff is an independent, New Zealand-owned media outlet, founded in 2014 as a site covering New Zealand television, with a mixture of reviews, interviews and opinion. Over the years we have grown and expanded our remit to cover politics, business, culture and more. From the start we conceived of ourselves as a magazine – not aiming to be fastest, or across everything, but to have a recognisable style and scope. We want to publish content that is smart, accessible, sometimes provocative with heart and, where appropriate, a sense of humour.

We employ over a dozen writers and editors, most Auckland-based, along with a network of freelancers, seeking out strong and diverse voices. We are nonpartisan – we have always and will continue to publish perspectives from across the political spectrum.

We explicitly aren’t trying to duplicate what’s already being done well by other media. We cover news through our email newsletter The Bulletin, and our daily live updates, but it’s not our core business. Most importantly, we publish a far smaller volume each day than our colleagues at larger sites. We aim to put out 10 to 15 crafted pieces of content, versus the hundreds posted by the big publishers.

How we’re funded

The Spinoff is funded by a mixture of commercial content and advertising, and by its audience through The Spinoff Members. We launched Members less than a year ago, to help our readers contribute to our work, and have been blown away by the response. It’s no exaggeration to say that, post-Covid-19, we would not be viable without the support of our audience. In early March we hired our first fully Members-funded reporter, who will join the press gallery as soon as he’s allowed onto a plane (a whole other story, coming next week), and we have been able to pivot to covering this crisis only because of those who have chosen to financially support us through this deeply troubled time for media. We have lost two of our longest-serving and largest clients, among others, through the commercial shock of Covid-19, yet the support of Members has helped us weather the storm.

The other part of our income – and still comfortably the largest – is commercial revenue, through businesses and other entities who partner with us to fund sections or content on the site. Where they have a role in a story, these are clearly labelled as “partner content”, and their advertising wraps certain sections on the site. (If you would like to talk to us about working with The Spinoff, please get in touch).

How to use The Spinoff

After becoming a Member, the best way to stay in touch with what we do is by downloading our app (for iPhone or Android) and by subscribing to one or more of our newsletters. The Bulletin is a cult favourite, with Alex Braae distilling the day’s key New Zealand news stories into a smart, readable email. What sets it apart from others is that it covers all the New Zealand media, not just The Spinoff, and is delivered with flashes of analysis to help make sense of it all. If you just want what we create, we have a daily and a weekly digest, subscribe according to your metabolism.

We also have an array of weekly and monthly podcasts, covering everything from politics to food, and a large selection of online video series, most funded thanks to NZ on Air. You can watch those on our site, or by following us on Facebook, Twitter or Instagram. We love social followers – but the usual caveats apply: the platforms are algorithm-driven and temperamental, so the best way to stay connected is through your inbox.

One last thing

We’re thrilled to have you here. Particularly our Members – this month has been incredibly hard on our staff, as it has on all New Zealanders, adjusting to covering the pandemic, while processing its impact on their own lives. When Bauer Media fell, we all had friends who lost jobs, and it underscored again just how reliant we are on The Spinoff Members, both at an individual and organisation level, to be able to continue to do our work.

Over the coming weeks and months, we will slowly introduce more of the kind of content we’ve been known for prior to Covid-19. We’ll cover culture, from pop music to books to prestige drama. We’ll cover politics and business, from its impact on people to the behaviour of our biggest institutions. And we’ll publish writing that takes a wry look at New Zealand, in all its complexity.

Not all of it is for everyone. Despite our founding as a TV site, we still get infuriated Facebook comments when we publish writing on reality TV (read it, it’s some of the best stuff we do). But we will aim to cover both the new New Zealand that rises out of this extraordinary historical moment, and content that allows us to forget, momentarily, that we’re in it. Thanks for coming, and we hope you enjoy what you find, and if you have any questions or suggestions, we’re always keen to hear from you: info@thespinoff.co.nz

Keep going!

Jacinda Ardern and Ashley Bloomfield. (Photo: Hagen Hopkins/Getty Images)

MediaApril 9, 2020

New Zealanders deserve proper answers to difficult questions on Covid-19

Michael Morrah

Guest writer

Jacinda Ardern and Ashley Bloomfield. (Photo: Hagen Hopkins/Getty Images)

The 1pm briefing has become appointment viewing. But it is no substitute for transparent, timely information, even in such extraordinary times, writes Newshub investigations reporter Michael Morrah in this post originally published on Newshub.

Like all journalists in New Zealand right now, I’ve been covering stories day after day, all of which relate to our current coronavirus crisis. It’s the longest-running, bulletin dominating story I’ve ever known and is impacting every single Kiwi, young and old.

Given the ongoing significance of this epidemic, we as journalists need swift, precise information. We need this to inform the public. However, getting clear, timely answers to questions has frequently been an arduous and deeply frustrating process.

Early in this crisis, I put a simple question to the Health Ministry’s media team about Personal Protective Equipment. It took four days to get a response, and when I did, the information provided was vague, unhelpful, and did not answer my question. This is simply not good enough.

What’s happening now is that journalists are being referred to Dr Ashley Bloomfield’s daily 1pm press briefings in order to get the answers we need.

This is how these briefings work.

The room is filled with journalists from every media television, radio and print organisation in the country. Each of those journalists in the room has their own questions, plus questions from other colleagues in their organisation (who are chasing different angles) who are not based in Wellington and cannot attend the briefings in person.

The atmosphere is often tense, as journalists try to get their questions out before the officials call time, and it’s all over.

In a normal interview setting, journalists are able to ask a question and then ask a follow-up question. This is important, as it helps provide context. It also means journalists can challenge a position or comment. I fully understand these are not normal circumstances, but the information being provided (if you’re lucky enough to get a response) has been piecemeal at best.

Our Newshub political team, led by the indomitable Tova O’Brien, is doing a phenomenal job challenging officials, and extracting key facts, while fielding multiple text messages and emails from our team of journalists in other parts of the country.

Our job is not to just repeat what is being said at media briefings. But to listen, analyse and test the veracity of what is being said. If we have evidence which conflicts with the government’s version of events, we must have the ability to test this. This is our responsibility as a conduit for the public.

There also appears to be a massive disconnect with what the public is being told, and what is actually happening on the ground.

The call for our country’s most vulnerable to get flu jabs is a good example. On March 18, the Health Minister announced a major flu vaccination campaign to ensure hospital beds are available for a possible influx of Covid-19 patients. The ministry said it had vast stocks of the vaccine – 1.8 million doses to be exact. They would be available to those 65 and over immediately.

Over the coming days, it became apparent that this campaign simply wasn’t working. Why? Because GP clinics did not have enough of the vaccines, and their access to the vaccine had been restricted to just 60 doses per order.

Healthcare Logistics, the group that distributes the flu vaccine, emailed doctors to say their large orders had been cancelled because a company that supplies a brand of the vaccine has “run out of stock”.

When we raised this issue with the director general of health, Dr Ashley Bloomfield, he said we were moving “from a peacetime distribution to a wartime distribution” and the ministry was working on the issue.

The concern I have, however, is that even as I write this today, it’s clear just how far we really are from implementing a “wartime distribution”. I am still getting emails from our country’s elderly asking me why they can’t get a flu shot. Imagine the pressure our country’s doctors are under to explain this to their patients. This is a massive failure due to inadequate planning and contradictory communication.

If the government is really serious about its so-called “wartime distribution”, they need to start acting like it. Commandeer the courier trucks if needed and get the vaccines to where they’re needed. The same goes for swabs. Despite constant assurances that we have thousands, I am speaking to doctors on a daily basis who say they’re struggling to get enough (5 at a time), or have been told by labs their practice cannot get any as there is not enough.

Dr Bloomfield stated on Tuesday we had 50,000 nasal swabs in the country. That’s great, but they are not getting to those who need them. Why not? How can you expect our frontline health heroes to do their jobs effectively if they don’t have the swabs or PPE to do it. And if we do have tens of thousands of nasal swabs, why am I reading two emails from two different Auckland health groups, who represent hundreds of doctors, which tell their members that they need to move to using throat swabs because of supply issues with the nasal variety.

I think Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has done a solid job of steadying the ship through these uncharted times. But we need transparent, timely information. Not PR spin. This is important not only for journalists, but for all New Zealanders.