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A group of people sit at desks in an office. Some red dots are placed over half the faces to signal they're being removed
Which stories will we soon miss out on? (Image: Tina Tiller)

SocietyApril 24, 2024

The voices that vanish in a decimated newsroom 

A group of people sit at desks in an office. Some red dots are placed over half the faces to signal they're being removed
Which stories will we soon miss out on? (Image: Tina Tiller)

How will the recent wave of job cuts impact ethnic diversity in the media?

In November last year, I was working a very busy day in the newsroom of a large online news site, interviewing whānau about their concerns over the imminent closure of one of the few puna reo in Tāmaki Makaurau. 

That afternoon, my editor called my small team into an emergency meeting, warning us about a one-on-one meeting with the editor-in-chief the next day. What the meeting was about, they couldn’t say. I asked my editor if I should bring a union rep and have that meeting before my scheduled therapy appointment. They said both were a good idea. I’m about to lose my job, I thought. 

The next day, as anticipated, I was told my two-year contract under the Public Interest Journalism Fund (PIJF) wasn’t going to be renewed. In other words, in a couple of months, I wouldn’t have a job. I was the first person on the firing line that day, but not the last to return home with tired, watery eyes. 

In the last few months, this situation has replayed itself over and over for many journalists in Aotearoa. As someone who was employed to focus on underserved voices, I’m worried about the potential loss of ethnic richness and media plurality in newsrooms and the stories they produce.

Victoria Young says careers in media are discouraged in certain cultures due to instability. (Photo supplied)

In recent years, several media outlets have made conscious efforts to resource reporting for minority communities, for instance, the Te Rito Journalism Project, RNZ Asia, Stuff’s Pou Tiaki, and TVNZ’s Re: News. But it’s unusual to see initiatives like these thrive, or even exist, without public or philanthropic funding. 

Post-pandemic, in response to the media’s decline in advertising revenue, the Labour government established the PIJF to support newsmaking otherwise not viable under a commercial-only model. The fund’s spending breakdown is perhaps most succinctly outlined by one of its greatest critics, The Taxpayers’ Union. The fund of $55 million between 2021 and 2023 enabled cadetships and roles for journalists of Māori, Pasifika and “diverse” backgrounds, resourced bilingual reporting and accessibility technology, and funded student journalism and reporters in remote areas. 

Without the PIJF, the fate of these initiatives is unclear. As of today, Stuff’s Pou Tiaki team has been slimmed down from the original 10 writers hired to just two, and outside of the PIJF, TVNZ last week confirmed Re:’s team of 10 would be reduced to six amid cost-cutting measures.

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Anna Rawhiti-Connell
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River*, a Māori journalist in their 20s, feels “disillusioned” by the state of news media, and doesn’t trust media organisations to promote ethnic diversity on their own. Newsrooms run on tight deadlines with low staff numbers, and therefore “go for the lowest hanging fruit”, River says: often relying on press releases for pre-packaged stories and only approaching organisations that are acclimated to media queries for comment, such as central and local government and universities. With journalism numbers reducing seemingly by the week, this approach is likely to continue.

Minority communities, on the other hand, often aren’t approached at all, whether that’s because most journalists lack contacts in those communities, community members mistrust the media, or language barriers exist. But hiring a journalist from a minority group doesn’t automatically mean they are comfortable reporting on it: River comes from one of the largest iwi in the country, but avoids doing stories about it. “It’s your literal family members,” they say. “Whatever I do reflects upon my family name … it’s a lot to feel like everything about your culture, your whakapapa or your belief system relies upon what you do.” 

The closeness and smallness of minority communities can make stories harder to tell, from researching with limited resources and building trust with those who might understandably be wary of journalists, to ensuring cultural practices are followed in order to remain respectful while engaging. Stories that take longer to tell inevitably cost more money, something media companies are currently struggling to find. Regional and community reporters work in the same way, telling stories that can only be done well from within the community, not a national newsroom. These are the stories that cost money and are vitally important to a thriving democracy, but don’t typically make money due to their focus.

At one point, River had a supportive editor who allowed them the time to build trust with underserved communities, understand their worldview and express their viewpoint accurately. But after moving back to a fast-paced newsroom with little support, River no longer reports on te ao Māori. It’s one thing for newsrooms to say that they want to highlight Māori voices, River says, but another to “cultivate those relationships so that those voices can be heard”. 

What about the next cohort of journalists coming through journalism schools? Based on data I collected from them directly, 64% of students identified as European, 13% as Asian, 12% as Māori, 7% as Pasifika, and 2% as other, which is not far off from the latest data on Aotearoa’s ethnic profile. However, not all journalism students will finish their studies and end up working in newsrooms. Just five people applied for the $8,000 RNZ Asia Scholarship open to all New Zealand final-year and postgraduate journalism students from any Asian background. 

Journalism is a financially precarious profession, so it favours people who are already financially stable. Greg Treadwell, head of journalism at AUT, says young journalists get into the profession out of a  sense of injustice, but many end up leaving for more lucrative jobs or because they lacked support in the industry. This results in news deserts, where whole communities are left without local information, he adds. 

Greg Treadwell, AUT head of journalism, says we have an unhealthy public sphere. (Photo supplied)

“Media is seen as an unstable career and [it’s] discouraged in certain cultures,” says Victoria Young, the editor of BusinessDesk and co-founder of Kiwi Asians in Media and Communications (KAiMaC). “This means Asian journalists could be more influenced to move out of news media during tough times … Family pressure can create barriers to being in such a dynamic and poorly paid profession.”

But it’s critical journalists come from a range of backgrounds, Young says. “We want our news media – the people we see on screen and hear on the radio – to reflect the society we live in.”

At the same time as larger newsrooms were downsizing and many reporters of diverse backgrounds and areas of interest were losing their jobs, community stories were equally in peril. In March, the Hauraki Herald shut down. Two weeks ago the publisher of the Howick and Pakuranga Times was put into voluntary administration and is seeking a buyer. 

We will continue to miss out on more and more stories of everyday New Zealanders from all different backgrounds. And we won’t know, because there’ll be no one left to tell us.

*Name changed upon request. 

Regina George was onto something.
Regina George was onto something.

SocietyApril 23, 2024

Is it time for anti-capitalists to embrace shopping? An argument with myself

Regina George was onto something.
Regina George was onto something.

Welcome to the whirring wonders of one brain trying to align its actions with its beliefs within a system it thinks is evil.

My brain has been spiralling in a woke conundrum ever since I found out a bookshop I’ve never been to was shutting down. Good Books, a bookshop in Wellington where I have never lived, announced its closure in March. It will be the third bookstore to close down in Wellington in the past five years. Something stirred among the dust mites in my pile of library books. Guilt. It has not been the only closure as a result of what everyone keeps saying is a difficult time in retail. Everything feels like it’s crumbling, especially the good stuff. Let me introduce you to a safe-for-work edit of my internal mechanisms:

What’s this feeling then? It seems like you’ve forgotten who we are – we don’t believe in capitalism and consumerism, and we are NOT business sympathisers!

I know, but it’s a bookshop! Owned by writers! Doing good things like paying a living wage, hosting events and, as Claire Mabey wrote, “consistently championing under-sung voices”.

[Eyeroll] A business is an endeavour to snatch the money of its customers and to exploit the labour of its employees. Kiwi-owned or not, small or not, whoever is at the top is siphoning the value of their employees’ labour for their nice lifestyles. 

Woah, woah, woah! That is true of bigger businesses, but not all businesses (don’t bully me for saying that phrase). I’m talking about shops where the owner will greet and serve you – they’re not off on a yacht while their employees work, they’re right there next to them, and probably staying late to do all the behind the scenes work. Or, like so many dairy owners, it’s just them, doing everything. An owner-operated business can’t be painted with the same brush as a multinational. If I go to the Avondale market, and buy a pumpkin for $3, I’m handing my money directly to the person who grew the pumpkin. If I buy one at the supermarket, then sure, someone at the top is siphoning the value of the pumpkins growth and everything involved in getting it to me. I’m talking about going to the market instead of the supermarket.

Yes and no. I agree with what you said but it’s not that you want to buy pumpkins. You want to buy cool books and probably some nice new clothes, I know you. You don’t need these things as much as you need to eat, and there’s more books and more clothes at the op shop than you could ever read or wear out. 

I think people do need books. Life is not worth living without books, and society would be more of a shambles than it already is. And not just old books, because we need new stories and progress in our thinking and cultures. Making books does cost money. The people who write the books need to live and so need to get paid, and the books should be read. So… we need bookshops. 

OK I concede, books are essentials, but they’re also at least $30 and sometimes you read the whole thing in one day. It is cheaper to buy them online or, obviously, free to borrow from the library.

Yeah, but actually, we CAN afford to buy a book from a nice shop from time to time. And because we can, we should – maybe we are even obliged. You won’t like this but there are more important things than watching your savings account creep up.

But why not buy the books directly, cutting out all the middle people taking a cut? That’s all a bookshop is – something taking a percentage of what you pay, simply for selling it to you. 

Are we also going to cut out the editors and publishing houses? Now writers also have to be merchandisers, advertisers, stockroom workers and sales people? Do they also have to print their own books and learn how to lay out a page and what fonts are good? Books are going to get pretty shit, if they continue to exist at all.

These are false equivalents, why do you always do this when we fight!

Grrrr. Bookshops have value, because people don’t know what books they want to buy. At a shop they can browse, and ask for advice, and even just chat about books and be part of society. The shop invites people to consider books they might not come across otherwise, so they don’t get stuck in online algorithm bubbles. 

Aren’t these things also true of the library?

Yeah, but if the whole of Aotearoa is sharing the same 10 copies of one book, the publishing houses will go under and the writers will have no income.

The Botany Library, a perfectly fine place to get books.

What about those fancy clothes you’ve been perusing? Surely looking good isn’t essential to society in the same way that books are?

Guilty as charged. Even though I am just tempted to quote Maybelline I’ll instead point to Kate Sylvester’s abrupt closure. It made me think of people like Kristine Crabb and Rachel Mills who make their clothes in NZ, employing local garment workers, which is no easy feat. Everyone’s saying KS was a stalwart etc, and that is true, but those clothes were made overseas (mainly China). So how much more difficult is it for these smaller companies who make things here? And how cool is it that their businesses mean we have those making skills here? Even if they’re very expensive and only affordable to some…

Do you think maybe it’s a bit virtuous and self-important to think your few hundred bucks make a difference?

Haha, maybe. But it’s nice to act in harmony with what we believe rather than cognitive dissonance. Also… maybe a few hundred bucks here and there for these small businesses does make a difference.

Well, maybe if the bookshop had innovated, it would have a lot more few hundred bucks and it wouldn’t be closing down.

Oh, so now you’re a proponent of the free market? What do you want, books to be sold as 14 limited editions that each have one exclusive chapter which in two hours’ time is no longer exclusive?

Well what do you want? I thought we liked being a retailer’s worst nightmare.

I reckon more people like us should be spending money at places they think should exist. We should do it proactively rather than getting sad and leaving soppy comments on their Instagram closing posts.

You almost gave me a heart attack. You know we are not a buyer of new things. We don’t “spend money”. If we need something, we try to borrow it. If it can’t be borrowed, we’ll pick through the refuse of consumer culture at op shops, the dump, school fairs or Trade Me. This is what it means to be anti-consumerist! This is how we live by our morals. Also, we like it! There’s always an exciting surprise at the op shop!

I don’t know if that’s working… if people like us don’t put our money into ethical good shops selling things of actual value, they seem to get squeezed out and only the evil giants remain, especially now when times are tough. And then all there’ll be to sift through at the op shops will be cheaply-made, low-quality items from the evil giants. And do you really want Amazon to be the last standing bookseller? That’s just gross. 

Maybe these soft-capitalism endeavours are just ways to keep the system limping on, and to keep us all tied into, and buying into it. 

Are you proposing accelerationism, because we have decided that is evil, people will suffer and only the privileged will make it through. I think if we wanna do good with our money we should put it into the hands of people trying to do cool good stuff within the un-ideal system we live in, instead of keeping it all to ourselves like a squirrel with acorns. 

I read somewhere, years ago, that to the capitalist system, the most important job of people in developed nations isn’t the one we do 40 (or however many) hours a week, but that it’s to buy stuff, and that creeped me out immensely. I don’t want to do that job that keeps the cogs turning.

That is creepy, but I think since the revolution continues not to happen we need to change things from inside the system. You know, incremental change.

Do you reckon there’s a book we could read about this?

Surely!