We weren't sure it was ever going to happen, and we truly doubt that you can truly connect with that kind of premium customer when you've been loading the site with bullshit for years, but the Media Scrum team are all 100 percent behind the move, and wish the Herald team all the very best. The populist path they were rampaging down did not have any kind of future and it's time to try something new.
Of course, it's far too early to judge it as a success or not. The stockmarket liked it, giving NZME shares a notable boost on launch day last week, but this is a long-term project, and the full effect will take some time to work out. We've all got the patience of a flea these days, and want everything now, but sometimes you have to just fucking wait to see if something is really going to work.
It could be a bit much to hope for an unambiguously bright and shiny future, where good journalism receives strong rewards and we all head off down a path into brilliance, but if we can have anything from this experiment, we hope for two things.
The first is that we really, truly hope the NZ Herald sticks to its guns, and doesn't panic. There will undoubtedly be a catastrophic drop in unique users and page views with the launch of the premium content, but the editorial team have to tough it out, and show faith in their product.
After all, it might take a while to build up the audience to a sustainable level, and that is just not going to happen overnight.
The second (possibly forlorn) hope is that we hope they don't break the reporters. The company has made some astute hires in recent months, especially in the business field, but still has a limited pool of reporters, and they need to deliver worthwhile content every single bloody day.
People like Fisher and Savage and Johnston and Nippert are the best in the business in this country, and their work should be hugely encouraged. But a news website is ravenous beast - you can't have a lead story up for more than couple of hours before it gets stale, and always needs something new constantly, every day, all day.
There is bound to be some enormous pressure on the editorial team to produce the goods to fill those spaces, and when you're dealing with the types of stories these stars are dealing with, it can take a while - it's another fact of the business that you can't rush this shit either.
The ideal result, of course, is that the Herald gets more subscribers, which enables it to hire more top reporters and create more content getting more subscribers, enabling them to hire more top reporters, etc etc.
But we live in the real world where the corporate branches of media companies have made no secret of where their priorities lie, and any profits from the endevor are likely to go to the company's bottom line to make it look god for investors, rather than invested back into the actual business.
Still, we can hope for the best, and it's certainly got off to a strong start, with a tonne of great editorial content already put out under the premium banner.
We just hope it lasts, because if the Herald can't make it work in this country, with the talent under its masthead, nobody will, and then we're all screwed.
- Steve Lombard
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