Wednesday, July 5, 2023

Meanwhile, down a blind alley ...

That worked out well, didn’t it?

Just six months ago, Stuff announced the appointment of Caitlin Cherry as editor of what was then The Dominion Post.

Both she and her new employer made rapturous noises. “We’re thrilled to have Caitlin leading our newsroom in the capital,” cooed Stuff’s Joanna Norris at the time. “She is a fierce advocate for the city and as a lifelong Wellingtonian, she is inherently aware of all that is newsworthy in the city and region.”

Not mentioned, unsurprisingly, was that Cherry was taking on the job with no previous experience in newspaper journalism. None.

Cherry, meanwhile, said she was looking forward to “working with the team to ask the big questions, look at the best solutions, and talk to those people who are doing all they can to make life better for the community.”

Now she’s gone – just like that. But you had to read the New Zealand Herald, Stuff’s main competitor, to find out. A leaked internal email ended up in the hands of Shayne Currie, the Herald’s editor-at-large and media columnist (and many years ago a young and very savvy chief reporter of the old Evening Post, from which today’s Post got its name).

No surprises there. These days the Herald is often the first to break Wellington stories, which is itself a telling measure of the steady decline of a newspaper publisher that once, in the heyday of the Dominion and Evening Post, owned the city.

Why is Cherry going? That wasn’t clear from the email to staff in which Bernadette Courtney, Stuff’s newsrooms editor-in-chief, lavished praise on the now ex-editor, saying she had made a “huge impact” and been a “champion for Wellington”.

Cherry’s energy, news judgment and passion for journalism would be missed, Courtney said. In that case, what happened to make her quit?

All Courtney’s email said was that Cherry was moving on to “take on her next challenge”. It’s perhaps another measure of Stuff’s decline that the company apparently expects its journalists to fall for this obfuscatory corporate flim-flam, which comes straight from the HR Manager's Handbook of Euphemistic Cliches.

As Currie commented in his story, Cherry’s departure appears to be linked to other changes in Stuff’s editorial leadership team. Her resignation was foreshadowed in a Newsroom story two weeks ago which speculated that the capable Tracy Watkin, editor of the Sunday Star-Times, would take on responsibility for the editorship of the Post (confirmed today) as well as Stuff’s press gallery team. The rationale for this rumoured transfer of control wasn’t apparent.

That story also mentioned that some high-profile Stuff journalists would be quitting, starting with #MeToo crusader Alison Mau, in what appears to be yet another downsizing.

All this follows a series of changes that included the rebranding of the former Dominion Post, the creation of an unorthodox partial paywall for three of Stuff’s dailies and the announcement last month of a new corporate leadership group with the company’s owner, Sinead Boucher, in the new position of executive chair and publisher.

Under the revamped structure, Laura Maxwell (ex NZME) will replace Boucher as CEO and three newly appointed managing directors will look after various segments of the business. Boucher presented this makeover as preparation for “the next big disruptive force of the digital era – the advent of new generative AI technologies”.

Trying to make sense of what’s going on behind the scenes at Stuff, to say nothing of the constantly changing job titles, is a bit like trying to track shifts in power and influence behind the walls of the Vatican or the Kremlin.

If there’s a consistent, coherent strategy, it’s well concealed. There’s a random, ad hoc look to it which suggests Stuff is making it up as it goes. Suffice to say that Stuff makes Chris Hipkins’ government look like a model of stability.

One of the most dismaying aspects of the upheavals, from a journalist's point of view, is the torrent of flatulent PR jargon that accompanies the company’s every move. If you accept the theory that corporate hype expands in inverse proportion to performance, the outlook is not promising.

One of the worst offenders is Norris, who becomes managing director of Staff Masthead Publishing. In a statement accompanying the recent restructuring, Norris gushed: “Our mastheads are totally focused on our subscribers and delivering beautifully told journalism from across the country in print and digital channels. Drawing on our 160-year history of journalism, we are reinvigorating and growing the portfolio of iconic journalism brands which are embedded in communities across New Zealand.”

This is the type of empty, self-congratulating puffery you expect from ad agencies. A former journalist like Norris should know better. The bullshit detector she was equipped with during her time as a reporter has clearly been disabled.

Besides, what Norris said borders on flagrant dishonesty. Stuff has shown little respect for the "iconic journalism brands" she refers to, most of which have been gutted.  

Nadia Tolich, managing director of Stuff Digital, wasn’t far behind Norris. “I’m looking forward to reaching New Zealanders at scale, serving up lively, bold and entertaining content that stokes the interest of the nation and builds on our position as the number 1 digital site in NZ. That unrivalled reach, combined with the hyper-local power of Neighbourly and connection with nearly a million members across the motu is an exciting proposition,” Tolich was quoted as saying.

Oh, please. Give us a break. 

The sad thing is that there are still good people at Stuff. They will be looking around their increasingly deserted newsrooms and wondering whose job will go next. They could also be excused for wondering who’s going to magically produce the "lively, bold and entertaining content" that Stuff keeps promising to deliver in the wonderland of the future.

They have been let down at every turn by bosses who adopted a perverse business model. That Stuff prioritised digital at the expense of the traditional print product, and in the process destroyed much of the value in its mastheads, could perhaps be forgiven as monumentally bad judgment. What was not excusable was that the company alienated and antagonised its most loyal readers by haranguing them and bombarding them with a relentless barrage of woke propaganda. 

It effectively declared war on some lifelong subscribers by declaring them pariahs and refusing to publish any more of their letters. It was a novel way of building customer loyalty and it had the inevitable result. Making enemies of your readers - holding yourself up as morally superior and more enlightened - is no way to win hearts.

The Otago Daily Times and the Herald both serve as evidence that daily newspapers can survive and flourish in the digital era. Stuff, on the other hand, has blundered down a blind alley.

And so the agony continues. Cherry is leaving a paper whose steady downward trajectory sadly parallels that of the city it purports to serve. Both the paper and the city have lost their way. Each may have been a factor in the other’s decline, leading to a gradual ebbing of public morale and confidence.

The Post is still capable of breaking gutsy stories, as it proved with Monday’s front-page exposé by Tom Hunt of mayor Tory Whanau’s entitled behaviour at a Wellington restaurant. It was gutsy because the Dominion Post had unashamedly promoted Whanau’s mayoral aspirations last year (remember all those free publicity shots?) and vigorously supported her radical Green agenda, even to the extent of haranguing readers week after week with tedious pro-cycling propaganda under the “Mode Shift” banner.

Perhaps Monday’s story slipped through while the editor was distracted by other things, in which case it sent the reassuring message that a journalistic heart still beats somewhere within Stuff.

Unfortunately the paper then sought to redeem itself with Wellington’s noisy woke minority by publishing a strident opinion piece in which Whanau’s close friend, sometime Green Party publicist David Cormack, indignantly defended her.

Readers were left to conclude that publication of the Monday exposé was a momentary lapse of editorial judgment and that normal service had resumed. This is not to say there was no defence to be mounted on Whanau’s behalf; merely that it looked less than wholly convincing – and certainly not impartial – coming from a man who I understand sometimes accompanies her to events.

All this may sound cruel to Cherry, but it’s not meant to be. I think she made a mistake in taking on a job that was beyond her. (I recognise this situation; I've been there myself.) But the bigger mistake was made by Stuff in appointing her in the first place when she lacked the appropriate credentials. She now appears to have been made to pay for Stuff's misjudgement, which may explain the glowing tribute paid to her on her departure.

Cherry can’t be held responsible for the Post’s decline; for that, the blame rests with the Stuff leadership and with Cherry’s predecessors in the editor’s chair - notably Anna Fifield, who disastrously allowed the paper to be captured by a journalistic model that didn’t reflect the values and expectations of its readers.


25 comments:

  1. Stuff site today has a marked preference for sex- related titillation pieces ...apart from the expected racial slant pn other items, it seems to be a self indulgent site for trendies who gaze below their navel.
    I suspect they could not ignore the mayoral matter as word spread.
    Had the mayor been white, straight male and in a suit, I presume Stuff would have applied CRT, white privilege, arrogant male and called for his head .
    The line now seems to be so what, everyone gets a bit boozed from time to time.
    It will blow over anyway. I doubt it has damaged her at all with her supporters. More a badge of honour .

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  2. Surely, the inevitable result of all this skulduggery and bulls**t must eventually be a very ordinary bankruptcy. The question is only when.

    And won't STUFF necessarily be broken up and sold piecemeal - i.e. each local paper on its own?

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  3. Re bankruptcy, won't the ''quality'' journalism fund help it until after the election.
    It has a lot to do to promote correct voting before then.
    If it is broken up the buyers may well be vetted to ensure control stays on one side of the divide. Perhaps Iwi investments?
    Approved buyers only.

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  4. Thanks Karl for your expose of media machinations. To think that some (quantity unknown) actually absorb and believe what is peddled by the likes of Stuff beggars comprehension.

    Label me if you will - or won’t - but I cannot help noticing, and remark … wth is going on with Stuff and its preponderance of female staff? In your piece, Karl, I counted four male names, including that of the PM: vs seven (by my count) female names directly involved with Stuff.

    Could there be a bitchy war going on?

    Media bias and slant has taken on new dimensions since the release of the “Pravda Project”, but the employment of females in positions of supposedly reliable and trustworthy news output needs to be exposed to question.

    I leave it to others who take the trouble to read and watch visual media output to enlighten us.

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  5. It's true that four out of the five people in Stuff’s top tier are female, but in fairness I should point out that 30 years ago in a typical newspaper hierarchy the gender ratio would have been the reverse.

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  6. There do seem to be a lot of chiefs at Stuff and with strange titles.

    It's always been saddening, I think, that journalists - who are trained and often verbally pummeled into speaking plainly, simply and clearly - resort to bloated corporate bullshit.

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  7. "That story also mentioned that some high-profile Stuff journalists would be quitting, starting with #MeToo crusader Alison Mau, in what appears to be yet another downsizing."

    Hardly a loss. Alison Mau's contributions are as biased as Verity Johnson's.

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  8. I once subscribed to The Press (since 1991). Not any more.

    Once Stuff took the PJIF bribe/blackmail/loan money they literally stuffed The Press.

    It (like Stuff) became an apologist to Maori for all our apparent wrong doings, it became a leftist propaganda shill, but worst of all it stopped providing news that was not first cast in some spin. It was news by ommission.

    I cancelled, they hounded me but finally they gave up.

    Stuffs demise cannot come soon enough because they, like all the media that took the PJI funding have become nothing but hollow shells used as trumpets for this regimes vacuous promises.

    To this day I struggle to understand what the management team thinks they will achieve by alienating their audience.

    Maybe they do not see the forest for the trees in their rightousness like all good tyrants lackeys?

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  9. And finally today.... drum roll... Tracy Watkins is announced as editor of "The Post," replacing Caitlin. Caitlin was recently told she had to reapply for her job in competition with Tracy. An awful predicament for both of them, and a hospital pass for Tracy, I fear.
    https://www.thepost.co.nz/a/nz-news/350030860/new-editor-for-the-post

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  10. At the time of The Dominion Post name changing to The Post I emailed the editor Caitlin Cherry suggesting a change to Domino Post. Also with some gallows humour suggesting the paper would be the first one to fall. Was I in some way prophetic? Caitlin Cherry herself has now fallen over.

    She was asked to take over as editor/captain of a sinking ship. Think poisoned chalice etc. Her predecessor Anna Fifield made minimal to zero impact. My feeling is that both Anna Fifield and Caitlin Cherry would have had their hands tightly bound by the Stuff editorial masters. The style and content has not changed since everything went tabloid (2018). Plus, we no longer get daily editorials in The Post, excepting a Saturday editorial - which I suspect appears in all Stuff Saturday publications.

    Caitlin Cherry should be allowed some points at least. She did send a cheerful reply to my email.

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  11. You've nailed it again, Karl. It is agonising enough to watch Stuff slowly implode, taking down newspapers that were once loved and trusted by their communities. For someone like me who spent a working lifetime at papers I was proud to serve, worse is the vile spew that reliably emerges from the leadership every time another restructure rolls around. It is deeply insulting to the readers and, equally so, the remaining long-serving journalists who were schooled in how to cut through bullshit. - Bill Moore

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  12. An interesting analysis of a sad situation. Thanks, Karl.

    I've recently noticed Stuff's new premises in Featherston Street: bright neon signage, large windows so passersby can look on the staff in their cramped workspace. All very hip. What's the purpose? Do they want people to wander in with news tips? Is it a promotional exercise? Or a divorce from their associated mastheads?

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  13. Oh dear!
    What is to become of the management breed when they are finally exposed to their totally empty classrooms

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  14. Yes, loved that expose! More of those! Exposes R Us they should call it & watch it fly off the cyber shelves...
    Thanks for this about CC.
    As a somewhat whiny sub to the Press still I can comment that their pages are a little fuller of stuff I deign to read than perhaps they were...have the scales tipped in favour of stuff to read against stuff to ignore...perhaps? My excuse to hang on is still the same...this city is a big village and I prefer to know what's happening in it.
    They didn't print my mild/civil reproach about labeling Posie Parker a 'anti-trans activist', they still hate me.

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  15. Wow this guy du Fresene is sharp. On and on about another journalist and why she may or may not have left her job. I would have thought that in the first 10 minutes of the first day at journalism school there would be advice that if you are going to do a story about someone, it's always a good idea to... talk to them.
    Mister du Fresene appears not to be employed by any media outlet. Could it be that he's not very good?

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    Replies
    1. Dear Anonymous (sigh) Karl Du Fresne is a distinguished NZ journalist of many years standing and the reason he is no longer employed is because he is now retired.

      You should also keep in mind that this website is a personal blog and as such it consists of Du Fresne’s personal views and opinions on the issues of the day. This website is not and does not purport to be a vehicle for investigative journalism.

      [Karl - obviously I am attempting to speak on your behalf here, but this comment by Anonymous has been irritating me for quite some time now, and I thought it worthy of a riposte.]

      Peter Agnew

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  16. the Dom never the same after they shed the phantom and the horrorscopes (sic). now it is filled with unending lifestyle crap and all filler and no killer!

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  17. I use my name here for the simple reason that I try not to open my mouth and say things that I am ashamed of.

    anonymous posters who abuse others are cowards, in my opinion.

    I was taught as a youngster to never say anything behind someone's back that you were too scared to repeat to their face. I stick with that and have the scars to prove it 😎

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  18. Thanks Peter - appreciated. I tossed up whether to publish that comment but decided it was revealing, in its own winning way.

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  19. See Tova O'Brien heading Stuff's political side...to beef up the campaign for the govt's re-election I would think

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  20. Stuff and Tova were made for each other.

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  21. "Anonymous Gary Peters said...
    I use my name here for the simple reason that I try not to open my mouth and say things that I am ashamed of."

    Absolutely agree Gary !! If it's good enough for Karl to use his name, it's good enough for me.

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  22. Tova would make a good team with Paddy Gower. Two of a kind !!

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  23. Karl, 30 years ago journalism was a respected vocation.

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