The future of media in New Zealand might be "grim", journalists told a Queenstown audience at the weekend, but they were vowing to stay positive.
That was despite one of the panel announcing he was putting his media organisation
into "hibernation", effective immediately.
A panel of Stuff journalists comprising Craig Hoyle, Paddy Gower and Debbie Jamieson and Crux managing editor Peter Newport canvassed the topic 'The Future of Media in New Zealand' at the Queenstown Writers Festival on Saturday.
Sunday Star Times news editor Mr Hoyle said staff cuts to save money had been "disconcerting".
When he began working for the newspaper four years ago, there was one editor and three news directors working on the publication.
Now, he was the the sole news director, helping the editor produce two newspapers — The Post and the Sunday Star Times.
"It is not just the staff who have gone. It is the budgets for external commissions that have also gone ... I am doing lots of food writing now. It is fun ... but people are picking up extra jobs so the Sunday Star Times can still be published," Mr Hoyle said.
Fewer journalists doing more work was a common theme in the discussion, which traversed a range of other challenges for journalism, including the end of public interest journalism funding, loss of advertising revenue to social media giants Google and Meta, international poaching of New Zealand stories without payment for the work done by New Zealand journalists and the costs of printing and paper.
Discussion facilitator Queenstown-based Stuff senior writer Ms Jamieson said the problems were worldwide.
The loss of New Zealand journalists, from 4300 in 2015 to 1439 this year, was "dramatic and unfathomable for an industry we rely on for information", she said.
When she began her current role in Queenstown, she was in charge of seven reporters.
Now, she was the only Stuff reporter in the town and covering Wānaka and Central Otago too.
Former political journalist Mr Gower spoke of his experience of being "sacked in public" in February from his role at NewsHub.
The plans and dreams of all NewsHub journalists were dashed the day they learned they were being laid off by a United States company run by people he had never met, he said.
He was now a contractor for Stuff, working on a series of "positive news" and uplifting stories, because New Zealanders were not optimistic any more.
Positive news was valid news, he said.
Crux managing editor Mr Newport, who announced during the discussion that Crux, which had been operating in the Queenstown-Lakes area for six years and had recently moved into Dunedin, was making staff redundant, selling assets and going into hibernation as of Saturday, said journalists were "fighting for their lives".
"Nobody knows how absolutely serious and critical it is," Mr Newport said.
— APL
