Friday, April 14, 2023

Stuff's slow-motion suicide continues

A friend emailed me to ask what I thought of the announcement that the Dominion Post would henceforth be known simply as the Post.

I replied that what they choose to call the paper no longer matters, since it long ago ceased to bear any recognisable trace of its respected precursor titles. The name change simply confirms that Stuff’s owner, Sinead Boucher (and I’m guessing it would have been her decision, even if Dominion Post editor Caitlin Cherry announced it) has little knowledge of, and even less regard for, the heritage of the company she owns.

In fact when a company calls itself Stuff, a name that indicates profound disrespect for the nature of its business, any frivolous name will do.  

I added that I’ve given up caring about the fate of the paper(s) I spent a large part of my career working for, though I do feel for the few good people still employed there. Stuff has so thoroughly betrayed its journalistic legacy that I’m past caring whether the company even survives, which seems increasingly uncertain.

My friend wondered if Caitlin Cherry realised who her paper’s most loyal readers were. She then answered her own question: “Oldies like me. People who understand and appreciate history and are not consumed by 'presentism'" – a reference to the blind fixation whereby events and people from the past are judged according to the rigid and unforgiving ideological orthodoxy of the present.

Judged by the standards of this new form of hubris-driven bigotry, the word “Dominion” would be seen as having intolerable connotations of colonialism and subservience to an imperial power. That the newspaper was so named because it was launched on the day New Zealand attained Dominion status in 1907 is no saving grace. Stuff seems determined not only to disown but to erase its own heritage. 

It will have alienated still more of its diminishing number of readers with its latest lurch, and the irony is that much of this is being done to humour a demographic group that doesn’t buy newspapers anyway.

It remains to be seen whether the decline will be arrested by placing Stuff's main titles behind a paywall, as is rumoured to be pending. I doubt it. Stuff has left its move about 10 years too late, and in the meantime the quality of the product has deteriorated to the point where sensible people will decide they can do without it. The slow-motion suicide continues. 

 

21 comments:

Paul Peters said...

Hi Karl, I expect more changes too. The flag will go of course and there will be more Maori words .
I also expect it to be even more pro-govt and what might be classified as woke. The editor has already said that the letters and opinion pieces are not going to tolerate ''conspiracy'' and racist material (as defined by them of course).
Perhaps they see a Wellington market and Wellington focus because the local body election tilted heavily in their ideological direction.
As for the we are ''under no one's dominion'' line, they are under the dominion of the govt and are state-funded to the point of reliance and, coincidentally of course, are fiercely independent supporters of the govt's policies.
The anti-empire colonial aspect is aimed at their market .
How this paper and Stuff handle the run-up to the election will be an interesting watch.
I see there is talk of a paywall...maybe we will have ''premium'' items, along the lines of the Herald.
Today I see Stuff not as a news media operation but a kind of political party of media and cultural types allied to the labour-Green-radical ''Maori'' cause. - Paul Peters

Callum Davis said...

It’s hard to believe that this name change is anything but a reaction to the left-wing agenda of identity and race.

I’ve quickly learned that there are certain words that activists use to “charge” their opinions: colonialism, intersectional, discourse just to name a few conceptual terms before we get onto words like racism and other -isms and -phobias, or worse, bigotry, they throw out like the rubbish.

There is an obvious agenda to rewrite history and divert thinking towards an “approved” realm on thought.

“Dominion” is just the latest statue of disapproved thought to succumb to the vocal minority.

Eamon Sloan said...

Having regard for Stuff and the Dominion Post’s love affair with all things Maori how far away is addition of the Maori words Te Pou to the title? Te (Maori definite article), Pou (Maori for post, as in pole or fence post). I take the points made by Karl and Paul Peters that there is a dog whistle anti-colonialism feel to it all. While Stuff is getting about with name changes I am not the first to suggest the name of Stuffed.

I might not have complained too much had the title become Wellington Post. A scan of Papers Past reveals that the Evening Post was the only publication to have used Post in its title.

David McLoughlin said...

A couple of major historical errors stopped me in mid-read and made me re-read the sentences again to see if I had mis-read them:

“As an independently owned New Zealand company, we are under no-one’s dominion. New Zealand’s status as a dominion ended in 1945 when we joined the United Nations. It’s time for the word to go,” editor Caitlin Cherry said.

Of course, our status as a dominion was not something controlled by the UN. We achieved effective full independence from the UK when we adopted the Statute of Westminster in 1947 and finally the Constitution Act of 1986, but our dominion status has not been legally revoked, as far as I know.

The newspaper is owned by Stuff Ltd, which was bought by Wellingtonian Sinead Boucher in 2020, bringing the company into New Zealand ownership for the first time.

This one is so gobsmackingly wrong that I stopped reading any further. The Stuff stable of papers (formerly INL and its predecessors) were NZ owned until 2003, when they were flogged to Fairfax Australia. They only became overseas-owned then.

As a matter of interest, I worked for the Dominion and then the DomPost at the time of the merger between the Dominion and the Evening Post in 2002. They claimed then that no other newspaper in the world was called the Dominion Post. I was about the only person at the paper then who had extensive internet experience (I went online in 1995 with Netscape Navigator v1); it took me about five minutes to discover there was and is a newspaper of the same name in Morgantown West Virginia.



Paul Corrigan said...

David McLoughlin, I think Britain began loosing the reins about 1854 when the first parliament was assembled. I've always thought of that as our independence.

New Zealand did achieve Dominion status in 1907 and there was more loosening in 1917 when the Premier became the Prime Minister and the Governor (Earl of Liverpool) became Governor-General.

As for the Dompost: I stopped my daily sibscription about 2008. It was still readable then.

By the time I stopped my Saturday-only sub, about 2014, its lurch away from journalism had well and truly begun.

I'm surprised actual journalists still work there.

Cheers

- Paul Corrigan

Simon Cohen said...

Its no surprise to me David that the current owners of Stuffed have made two basic historical errors. Just a perusal of any of their papers any day will reveal many factual mistakes including basic errors of geography.
If they go behind a paywall it will be revealing to see how many people are prepared to pay to read their excuse for a newspaper.
Perhaps that explains their reluctance to implement this.
It could be very embarrassing.

hughvane said...

I have regarded Stuff as 'Stuff & Garbage' for about the past three years. I no longer bother to do more than skim through the headlines looking for anything resembling actual news about the region in which I live, and old favourites such as the words of Joe Bennett. I then switch to the obituaries (I'm of that certain vintage y'see).

Should Stuff self-destruct as is suggested, I shall be happy to form a squad of cheerleaders to help it on its way.

Trev1 said...

So Caitlin Cherry tells us with all her editorial authority that New Zealand ceased to be a dominion when it joined the United Nations? Like Posey Parker's alleged racist hand-signal shown blurred out on TV3 recently (the original footage made clear she was only tightening her zip), it's never been more obvious that the New Zealand media today simply make stuff up. Maybe "Stuff's" title acknowledges that? They are generating alternative facts from an ideologically driven parallel universe. Now there's a case for the "Disinformation Project" to get their teeth into.

Trevor Hughes

Anna Mouse said...

It is a strange place to stand for Stuff. Willingly loading the gun, placing to your foot and then shooting yourself in said foot.

This is truly a self inflicted wound that is already filled with rot.

I ceased my decades long subscription the Christchurch Press because it too has gone the same way.

Ben Thomas said...

Journalism now seems to have articles beginning, "yeah, nah". If la Boucher thinks people will pay to read tripe she is off her head.

Paul Peters said...

NZ was a member of the League of Nations between the wars. As a dominion. Membership of the UN has nothing to with Dominion status....I think she got that from one of type in and up pops an answer things online. It was simply dropped after the war, part of the evolution.

Chris Hancock said...

How on earth did their diverse focus groups not recommend The Woke as the new name?

Doug Longmire said...

Very well said, Karl and Paul Peters.
This once decent newspaper has degenerated to simply being a Pravda propaganda publication.
"Stuffed" is actually an appropriate title!

Paula Moore said...

Wasn’t becoming a dominion the origin of de-colonisation??!

PaulL said...

I presume Ms Boucher will not be exposed when the company itself goes bankrupt. She may have bought it, but I'd assume it's heavily debt financed. She'll be paying herself a decent salary and that won't be clawed back in any bankruptcy proceedings. Ultimately that's the business of the banks who loaned the money, they probably should have known better.

Ted said...

For anyone interested in the history: ‘Dominion’ was quietly dropped from New Zealand’s official nomenclature in 1945 after External Affairs officials advised that it signaled subordination (Canada had done something similar a decade earlier). This was implemented ‘discreetly, and with the minimum of fuss’ through administrative procedures and private correspondence makes it clear the Labour government wished to avoid making the matter a political issue. See G.A. Wood, ‘The Former ‘Dominion of New Zealand’, Political Science

Don Franks said...

And The Post shall have no dominion
under the windings of the pc
They lying long shall not die windily
Faith in their hands shall snap in two,
And the unicorn evils run them through;
And The Post shall have no dominion.

Jordan Heathcote said...

You are too close to the source.

The mainstream media used to have great monopolies.

Newspapers prior to the age of the internet were a monopoly business, no different to any other natural monopoly. It was, prior to the internet, the only source for local content or a subset of advertising because the only way to advertise was through the classified section in a newspaper or news magazines. These were all local monopolies that were very profitable. An analysis of the early political leaders of New Zealand shows this, a number of them founded and owned the only newspaper in a geographic area.

What the internet has done has large consequences. Other than what has been mentioned here, there is a few forgotten factors. I think the distrust of the media has grown from the ability to discover and discredit a Media narrative in real time, either because you see contrary evidence that shows the Journalist scum is lying or because you see the story proven false later. In either case, instead of quietly seething in the background, you can share your frustration with the liars (journalists) and prove that they are lying to other people.

Another forgotten factor is the ability to simply find alternative news sources. There was once a unifying of opinion around these media monopolies which set the perspectives for everyone indirectly through their reporting. They directed a reader mass to whatever opinion and you could be presented with a limited set of options for beliefs or ideas. This is no longer the case, you can find all sorts of political opinions from all sorts of people so long as the big tech platforms haven't censored it off.

But the biggest factor is the ever tighter relationship between established power and the journalist class. The journalist class have increasingly become the defenders of the established powers that be, very little real criticism is ever laid of anyone in power. It is always punching down at the wrongthinkers, the underclass proles etc. The completely sheepish promotion of the Orange man bad, Covid, Ukraine and Antivax/wrongthinker misinformation crisis has been astonishing. I don't think there has been a single criticism of the misinformation/disinformation crisis to date which mentions that journalists are effectively trying to gate keep their power by dictating who is and who isn't 'disinformation'. The cultish worship of 'experts' and the conveyor belt of correct opinion priests plucked from some pigeon hole at a university somewhere has been immensely discrediting for the establishment media. Every ridiculous prediction from an 'expert', the demanded deference to 'the experts' makes reading most legacy media feel like reading Pravda.

As the Soviet dissents used to say, there is only Truth in Pravda.

Paul Peters said...

I see Stuff sticking by its claim NZ ceased being a Dom on joining UN...an opinion piece talking to various former eds this morning in an article.
Including the not unexpected race input from academia that Dom status was a reward for stealing and crushing Maori. Nothing of the sort.
Anna's wish for Poneke Post might indeed be the direction it is going by stealth, indirectly, hence no Wellington in title. Wait for the new masthead and the mysterious announcement on April 27.
The nonsense about it being a fiercely independent operation continues. It has its loyal, party faithful readers and no doubt others who look for road crash updates and other material and glide over the rest. _ Paul Peters

Anonymous said...

I deleted all apps for Stuff years ago. Occasionally see the odd link to some mindless article on Facebook that just reaffirms I made the right choice.

Eamon Sloan said...

More on the Dominion Post name change. Has anyone noticed the fading out of the “Dominion” lettering on the masthead? It comes across as a slow moving strip tease act. Though Russian funeral music would be more appropriate than strip tease tunes.

The name has appeared as Domiion Post, then Doiion Post, then Doion Post and so on. The words not formed in the strip tease act were maybe Onion, Minion, Omni, Ion. The word most easily formed would of course be Domino. It should have stopped there and been taken up as the most apt official name, The Domino Post. In terms of dominos I expect it will be first newspaper to fall.