72. The political limbo game

New Zealand's political journalists were trapped in the ultimate 'damned-if-they-do, damned-if-they-don't' situation during the recent coalition negotiations for a new government.They had nothing to report, but were heavily criticised for reporting on it anyway. 

They had to follow all the latest developments as the talks took place behind locked doors, and there weren't any, so were forced to do awkward colour pieces about the interminable wait, spending days and weeks hanging about in hallways, trying to catch a whiff of anything newsworthy.

They couldn't even see who was even going into these meetings, and were forced into undignified positions, peeking around doors and over fences to get any kind of clue to what was happening.

The parties involved were all keeping a cone of silence over the whole thing (although it probably helped the big parties that they seemed to have genuinely no idea which way Peters was going to go until he went up there and told the whole world). But there was also the possibility of some big, big news coming out at any moment, and staff needed to be on standby for that moment. It might be weeks away, or could have been in the next hour, but it was definitely coming, and reporters and camera-people needed to be ready for it.

So every day, the TV reporters went live to the studio to reassure the presenters that no, nothing was still happening, and the only copy coming out of the gallery were light colour pieces about the waiting period, or desperate predictions based on the very flimsiest of evidence.

Naturally, this lead to the usual snide commentary and mean tweets from all the usual suspects, wondering why the press gallery were wasting their time, and maybe they should just bugger off and wait for an pronouncement. The politicians should just be left alone, they argued, and things would go a lot faster if those pesky media scum stopped asking impertinent questions.

Fortunately, that's not how journalism works, and asking questions is what we fucking do, and the question of 'do we have a bloody government yet?' had to be asked over and over again, every fucking day

The reporters knew they would take shit either way so, amazingly, they got on with doing their fucking jobs. Even the puff pieces about how many tiles there are on the floor served a purpose - they showed that there was someone there for when the shit did hit the fan, reassuring the readers, viewers and listeners that any big developments would be swiftly and fully covered.

Of course, the reporters were accused of being lazy, because they were just sitting around all day, but those accusations invariably came from people who don't work in daily journalism and seemed to have no idea that it's actually a tough fucking gig, covering that shit day after day.

The ability to wait - for a story, for a contact or even a goddamn phone call - is an indispensable part of being a journalist - they should really teach more about this skill at j-school.  It's part of the job, and even with nothing happening, it can be incredibly stressful. Especially when you're dealing with the political future of the whole goddamn nation.

The press gallery at Parliament worked their fucking arses off this year, and it didn't stop after the election. Some of them cancelled much-needed holidays to wait it out, and some got gushing nosebleeds from the stress. There was no fucking lazinesss there.

We can only hope the inevitable pay-off, when Mr Peters finally stepped up to the podium and revealed he was going with Labout, was all the more sweeter because of it. Most of us in the news game live for moments like that, even if it feels like our whole lives are ticking away while we wait.

- Ron Troupe

71. You might be right, but you don't need to be a dick about it

Nobody likes making a fuck up, especially when everybody in the world can instantly see your error, but they still happen.

In this climate of overworked staff and a critical lack of time in the newsroom, silly typos on instant online news stories are unavoidable, even if every digital journo fucking hates making them. Nobody likes fucking up at the best of times, and especially not when you've got thousands of people watching and judging everything you do.

So despite the best of efforts, they will happen. They do, of course, get immediately fixed when spotted, but it's still a little shocking and disconcerting to see how much it drives some readers into a total fucking rage.

Accepting that human beings aren't fucking robots is part of being a grown up. You can expect more, you can even expect total perfection all the time, but it shouldn't be a crushing disappointment when you don't get it. Fucking toddlers manage to work that shit out.

The people running the big online news sites in this country hate making mistakes as much as any other person, and are only too eager to fix their fuck ups. If they're fast enough, they'll spot them first – and they usually do, because they're looking at their sites more than any other human being. If they fix it before anybody notices, it didn't happen, and we can all move on and just hope no smartarse shithead took a screenshot.

But over-worked and over-stressed editorial staff don't need a fucking lecture on the downfall of media standards every time they spell police as polcie. They welcome short, precise notice that something isn't right, and this will usually result in a 'shit yeah, you're right', a thank-you and a swift correction.

If, however, you feel the need to express your displeasure in the medium of indignant profanity, telling people you've never met that they should all be fired and burn in hell because this is the downfall of all journalism and it wasn't like it in your day - well, then you're not going to get far.

Because that kind of missive is even way less effective. You might think you're blasting a big, sprawling organisation, but you're also pissing on an actual person, and you can't blame them if their reaction is a “fuck you, buddy, I'll get around to fixing it later”. If it's not huge and noticeable - and most of the errors that attract this kind of vitriol are definitely not - it can fuckin' wait.

Bigger issues of overall balance and bias are a different matter altogether, but when tiny mistakes are made that are easily fixable, everybody needs to calm the farm. They'll sort it out, if you don't be a dick about it.

Nobody really likes being told they've fucked up, but a bit of perspective – and some common goddamn courtesy – can go a long way.

- Katherine Grant

70. Column writing is more than just an opinion

The giant media mega-merger between Fairfax and NZME is currently looking deader than dead, for a variety of complicated and logical reasons. There is still the outside chance it might happen, with appeals still ongoing, but it's not looking healthy for the plan.

One can only hope that one of the main reasons behind the disapproval was the horrifying possibility that every newspaper in the country would start carrying Mike Hosking's column, and that local voices would be drowned out by the boorish braying of the radio host, assuring the whole country that everything was okay, because Mike has a nice house and a Ferrari. You just have to work hard, think smart, and act like a complete fuckwit, and you too can be just as beloved, Mike could tell you.

There is, unsurprisingly, more cross-pollination of editorial staff as companies consolidate and get together, with redundancies and double-ups ruthlessly sniffed out and eliminated. Radio stations and TV networks and newspaper publishers share the same masters, who fight the imbalance of the balance sheet by cutting out vital staff, and then act amazed when readers/viewers are turned off by an inferior product.

One of the unfortunate casualties of all this consolidation. has been the professional columnist, who is rapidly becoming an endangered species. Why pay an actual writer to offer up one decent essay a week, when your national TV or radio star can shit out a column during the ad breaks? It's not just filling column space, it's free promotion for the media company's brand, and everybody wins.

Except the reader, of course, but who gives a damn about that poor bastard? The problem is, radio stars make terrible goddamn columnists. What works during a three-hour radio show doesn't always work in print. Several high profile columnists have had their fingers smashed for writing things they can get away with saying on air, because with the audio there is often a dissenting voice, or some sort of context, or even an indication that the writer/presenter is taking the piss, all of which is lacking in the plain black and white of print.

Great hosts are often terrible writers, with meandering and mediocre opinion pieces about the same old bullshit everybody else is talking about. There are always exceptions – Kerry McIvor is still a cracking writer who doesn't fuck about getting to the point – but the art of the column is getting buried in all this goddamn cross-promotion.

(It's also notable that the TV and radio newsreaders, who just do the bulletins, often make surprisingly great writers, probably because they're used to speaking in short, sharp and clear sentences, and know the value of editing that shit down. In all the pieces about the bloodletting at Mediaworks last year - and there were a fucking load - longtime loyal presenter Carolyn Robinson wrote one the best for The Spinoff, capturing the thrill and joy of breaking news, making her cold dismissal at the end all the more personal.)

Everyone thinks they're a writer, and everybody has an opinion, but writing a column does actually take some skill, with a desperate need for structure and a proper point, or it's all just mad rambling. It's something that needs to be worked on, not tossed off in the break.

There are still some great columnists out there, and the very best are those whose opinion you totally disagree with, but you still end up reading their point of view. That takes skill, and a bit of courage.

Media companies are cost-cutting and penny-pinching, but dedicated column writers – not just the most popular voice on the radio - still have their place. It takes more than a good voice.

- Margaret Tempest

69. Ain't no elites here, mate

One of the great insults lobbed at the editorial departments of the big news media companies is that they're a cultural elite, full of arrogance and misplaced superiority. Just a bunch of Auckland wankers who drink fancy fucking wines and spend every weekend trying to get into the Herald on Sunday's Spy section, utterly divorced from the common man and his common sense.

They don't care what happens in the small towns, or anything south of the Bombay Hills. Everyone down south knows that.

But a city that is expanding as rapidly as Auckland has to get its population from somewhere, and despite the fervent wishes of morons and racists everywhere, it's not all international immigration. As the biggest city in the country, Auckland attracts a lot of people from all over the country, brought there by the bright lights and opportunities.

People who have deep, long family ties to Auckland can find themselves outnumbered by internal migrants from Timaru, Feilding and Whakatāne when they are in a gathering of friends or colleagues in the big city. Yeah, the housing market is a fucking nightmare and the traffic is getting worse and worse every month, but Auckland has the brightest lights in the country, and anybody hungry for opportunity is going to be drawn to that like an idiot moth.  

This can be clearly seen in the big national-scale newsrooms in Auckland  -TVNZ, Newshub, the Herald, Stuff, RNZ and NBR aren't packed out with Aucklanders worried only by Auckland problems - they're full of people from all over the country.

And just because they've embraced the JAFA lifestyle doesn't mean they've forgotten where they come from, and they don't just remember it when their local team comes to play at Eden Park. We've all got our roots somewhere and we all care about them.

Which means those complaints about the short-sightedness of Auckland-based newsrooms are a complete load of dogs bollocks. The news organisations might feature a lot more stories about Auckland, but that's because it's a third of the country's population, and yes, another story about the terrible traffic snarl-ups is going to affect a shitload of people and is always going to get more attention than a 10-minute traffic jam at a Dunedin intersection.

(Although it's worth noting that online stories about the horrors of Auckland traffic actually pick up a hell of a lot of their audience from outside the big city. They always do well online because Aucklanders want to know if they're getting home tonight, and because non-Aucklanders like to read those stories and feel smug about their nine-minute commute to work).

These people do give a shit about the state of the rivers in Canterbury, or the latest shenanigans at the Horowhenua council. Every single story might not always make it onto the nationwide bulletin, but these things aren't just forgotten, and all the big news outlets do substantial stories about hyper-local issues all the time.

All those Auckland media people might be wankers, but they are still giving national attention to fine work already done by their colleagues at local papers and radio stations, backing up the local journos (who are doing great work) and giving their concerns and crusades a national platform.

Just because they live in the big city, doesn't mean they don't still care about the small towns.

- Margaret Tempest

68: The boy who cried breaking news

CNN broke the breaking news banner, but they won't stop flogging it into oblivion. They made it meaningless and unhelpful, and have nearly ruined it for everybody else.

The 24-hour news channel is just one of many news outlets to have a constant BREAKING NEWS banner scrolling across the top/bottom of the page/screen, but they're the most egregious with it, and will use it for anything. Even if it's about something that happened hours ago, or is just the latest development in a huge story that has been running for days, there is a big red banner on the bottom of the CNN screen, screaming for your attention.

Sometimes you catch them running out of even that, and they just have a 'BREAKING NEWS:' sitting there, with no other text. It's telling you that there probably is some big news out there somewhere. It'll come through, any second now. Promise. Just you wait.

The reasoning behind it is obvious, the whole world is full of flashing lights and banners, and you've got to be loud and obnoxious to grab somebody's attention, and nothing does that like the latest big news. As a society, we're fucking addicted to breaking news, and we're all terrified of missing out on something important. Even if we've only got a moment, we've got long enough to read a banner.

But there is a cost to this when you use it for every fucking thing. It devalues the whole idea of standing out, because something that is always there will inevitably fade into the background of normality. The more that it's used, the less effective it is.

Outlets like CNN have been around for decades now, so a lot of media companies have learned this rule, and save the banners for truly breaking news. Those that can still restrain themselves from losing their shit over every damn thing will notice that a lot more people are paying attention when you do flash something big and important.

Unfortunately, there are also a few newsrooms that don't give a flying fuck about little things like 'over-saturation' or 'total overkill', and are only too willing to take a giant dump on the whole idea of long-term credibility, in favour of short-term gains.

One of those worst offenders in this country atthe moment is the NZ Herald, which uses a breaking news banner for fucking anything, to the point where it's totally devalued. They'll slap that label on anything: write-offs of other newsrooms' scoops from seven hours ago, the latest developments on The Block, a house fire around the corner.

Most organisations have the ability to do an event bar, and anything can go in there, and it can be a great place to raise awareness of good longform journalism further down the page, or of some campaign by the newsroom to wipe out childhood diarrhea or some shit. But that ain't breaking news.

Breaking news is something big, something important, and flashing anything less is insanely counterproductive. The easy way to tell if something is worth a breaking news banner is if it passes the 'oh shit' test - if you tell somebody something has just happened, and their first reaction is 'oh shit', that's banner-worthy for sure. Anything else is pointless and counter-productive.

If this goddamn industry is ever going to survive much further into the 21st century, it needs to stop yelling about everything, and only shouting about the 'oh shit' moments.

- Margaret Tempest