An open letter
from our editor, our CEO and our founder about the future of The Spinoff
At this time of year, we would normally be coming to you with an exciting pitch to support some great work in 2025. We even had something lined up.
In the last few months, however, it’s become apparent that what we really need to do is level with you about our current reality. We have always tried to be open with our audience, especially our members, past and present. In that spirit, we cannot pretend everything is fine.
Too often this year, we’ve had terrible events happen in our media that no one saw coming – and without the opportunity for the audience to do something about it. We wanted to explain where we’re at and why, but also to give you a concrete action you can take to help change reality.
First, some facts
The Spinoff’s revenue comes from three main buckets. Typically, the largest is advertising and commercial partnerships. Next comes money we get from our audience via members and fundraising appeals – people happy to pay so that The Spinoff remains free for all. Last comes a bundle of partnerships and projects – we have a contract with Google, we often receive funding from NZ On Air to make projects like the Juggernaut podcast, and we get some Creative NZ funding for our books section.
Two of those buckets have been leaking hard lately. The steep decline in advertising for local media has been well documented. We’re no different – we’ve just seen the worst monthly decline since the business was founded. We sincerely appreciate all of The Spinoff’s clients and partners who remain committed to working with us, both now and in the future.
While the current economic cycle may change, conservative estimates suggest 70% of advertising spend now goes to large, unregulated overseas technology companies. The government, the largest advertising spender in the market, continues to favour these technology platforms over local media. Again, this is its choice – but it’s not without devastating consequences for local organisations like ours.
The other bucket is state support for our journalism. New Zealand does not have a large, non-commercial broadcaster on the scale of the BBC in the UK or ABC in Australia. Instead we run a type of decentralised public media, with NZ On Air funding projects for a number of platforms. Historically it has been an enthusiastic believer in series like Juggernaut and Alice Snedden’s Bad News – however, just last Friday, we discovered that all our key competitors had projects funded, but all our proposals were declined.
This is the second straight NZ On Air funding round where this has happened. Meanwhile, our Creative NZ funding has been halved this year, and the Public Interest Journalism Fund, which currently supports two roles within our small team of 31, is due to finish next year. While the state is under no obligation to fund our work, it’s hard to watch as other platforms continue to be heavily backed while your own funding stops dead.
As a result, we have had to make some very difficult decisions over the last month. Alongside many cost-cutting measures we have:
- Significantly reduced the number of permanent roles at The Spinoff
- Frozen virtually all external editorial commissioning, including essays and all feature writing
- Put two popular and high-performing newsletters, Future Proof and The Boil Up, on hiatus for the foreseeable future as these were edited by external and specialist writers
- After an unsuccessful attempt to find funding, we will be putting a pause on the commissioning and publication of The Friday Poem in 2025.
All this is happening at a time when our audience has never been stronger. For the month of October 2024, we have an audited audience of more than 400,000. Last week people spent as much time reading The Spinoff as they did during our biggest week last year, the week of the election. Since April 2023, the average time each person spends on our site has increased by 25%, rising from just over four minutes to five and a half in October this year. This will be our biggest-ever year for podcast listenership. Basically, our audience consumes us more than ever – but that is completely decoupled from money to pay for our work.
It’s the definition of a paradox – never more loved by its audience, never with less support from advertisers or public funds. So to survive, we need to close the gap between the number of people who enjoy what The Spinoff does and the number of people who pay for it. Right now, the gap is too large.
Here is where we really have to get honest about our future – and ask for your help.
Today we are announcing a big, audacious goal – to double the number of members who support us with monthly or annual payments. It’s the only way we can fill the hole created by the depressed advertising market and a rapid decline in public funding for our journalism. We know this won’t happen by tomorrow, but it’s what must be done. This is us saying that it’s time for The Spinoff’s audience to be the most reliable indicator of our value – and source of financial support.
If you’re one of the hundreds of thousands of New Zealanders who regularly enjoy The Spinoff, and want it to continue to be a part of the way Aotearoa understands itself, we are asking you, first and foremost, if you can, to do the following.
Make a regular commitment to support our work by starting a monthly or yearly donation. You can do this as a business or as an individual, and we allow gifting. If you already support us, you have our deepest gratitude, but if you want to take action, you can gift someone else a membership.
We know it’s a big goal, but there is precedent. In March 2020 we lost all our advertisers as the Covid lockdown hit. We worked around the clock, creating coverage that circled the world. In just two weeks, we tripled our members, who answered the call in our hour of need. It’s that time again. If just half the people who come to our homepage every day donated, we would be far better equipped for the troubling new operating environment we face.
Right now, just over 2% of our audience support us financially. These people give to us either monthly or annually. Some give $10 a month, some $15, others $50. The thing that matters so much to us is the consistency.
We are so conscious of the support we already get and that we are not alone in facing some tough external realities. We know it’s been a hard year for many. In all honesty, that’s why we’ve held off on writing to you for so long.
But this is where we find ourselves today, publishing an open letter to ask for your help.
In typical Spinoff fashion, we’ve given this membership drive a name that reflects the sense of community we draw from and share, and the strength of feeling so often demonstrated by our audience, to whom we now turn to ask: will you join the Committee to Save The Spinoff?
