The Spinoff and Barkers are proud to present a new seven-part podcast series: The Get. Each week Canon award winning journalist Naomi Arnold will interview some of New Zealand’s best feature writers and news journalists about how they hunted down the biggest stories of their careers.

“They are the stories I find endearing – mavericks, people who live and die by their own rules … I like to write these stories and remind people you don’t have to go to uni, get the job, get the mortgage – you can have a very rich and meaningful life doing things the way you feel is right.”

Ben Stanley, 32, is an award-winning freelance journalist and editor of Vice Sports NZ. A former Waikato Times and Sunday Star-Times reporter, he hails from Taupo but since 2014 has been mostly living and writing abroad. He won Canon Media Awards for sports feature writing in 2012, 2013 and 2015, and his passions are long-form sports features, profile writing, and Nick Cave’s music. Here he talks about his fascination with the American South, interviewing New Zealand’s only Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, the perils of freelancing and his reluctant acceptance of social media (including Twitter: @benstanleynz)

You can listen to or download this episode of The Get by using the player below or by subscribing through iTunes.

Links to stories mentioned in this podcast:

Talent lurks in unexpected places, The Waikato Times, March 2011
“I Understood the Terrain of Crisis” – An Interview with Kiwi War Reporting Legend Peter Arnett, The Spinoff, November 2015
How New Zealand’s Peter Arnett, the world’s greatest war correspondent, found peace at last, 1972 magazine, summer 2015
Lee Ralph – the caveman-poet of skateboarding, The Waikato Times, May 2012
Eight hours on the stand, The Waikato Times, January 2011