83. At the end of the wire

Reporters and editors at New Zealand's newswire services never really got any respect, but carried out some invaluable work and it's a genuine bummer that they have now become extinct.

Wire reporters have broken some huge fucking stories over the past century of journalism in this country, but were rarely up for the big media awards. And when they were, they were often overlooked in favour of colleagues from 'proper' publications.

They also covered a lot of basic news stories, things that the big papers and broadcasters would never get around to, due to a shortage of staff or the tyranny of distance. Wire reporters could provide useful and necessary copy on any kind of news event, no matter how big or small. For the entirety of the 20th century, wire reporters were at the scene when nobody else was, and telling stories that nobody would hear otherwise.

The slow death of the wire concept in New Zealand began when the NZ Press Association (NZPA) died in 2011. After 132 years, it was all over in a few short months, mainly because APN and Fairfax couldn't agree on some basic fundamentals behind the business, and decided they could do better with their own in-house services.

The two wire services set up by these big media companies lasted a little while, but still failed to garner much respect, even from their own executive branches. For an example of how much the corporate class at APN cared about its wire, you only have to note that when the company changed its name to NZME., nobody at the highest level had any fucking idea what the APNZ wire would be called for several weeks, until somebody just decided it would be called NZME too.

Both NZME and Fairfax's wires were eventually absorbed into their greater organisations, and don't exist as their own entities anymore (It probably didn't help that the reporters on the NZME wire just started saying they were from the Herald when they rang new contacts, so they didn't have to explain that they were actually calling from the editorial department.)

AAP's NZ Newswire (NZN) lasted a while longer, but was wrapped up with reasonably little fanfare last week. It was a shadow of what wires used to be in this country, with just a dozen staff covering things around the country, but it was still out there, supplying a large amount of copy to multiple outlets.

Now NZN is gone, and while there are legitimate questions over how much quality work it was actually producing in the past couple of years, that's 12 more decent journalists who won't be providing coverage of events throughout New Zealand, reducing the amount of overall news produced in this country. When combined with things like Fairfax's fucking idiotic idea to cut back on regional sports coverage, it means more and more events will slip through without being recorded or noticed by anybody. It all just fades away

There are still faint glimmers of the fire that once lit up the wire services, and hard-earned lessons that are being passed on. RNZ is almost turning into a defacto wire, with copy given freely to more than a dozen other outlets, including Bauer's Noted website and msn.co.nz. But the hard-working journos at NZ's public radio organisation aren't doing anything more work than they already are, and that's still the great loss of this wire.

The good folk of New Zealand's news wires will be missed, and the great and vital work they carried out will be missed even more. Wire journos saved the arses of subs desperate to fill a space and kept websites looking alive and new. Who's going to bother with things like that anymore?

- Margaret Tempest

82. What's so wrong with a 'no comment'?

After a full year of an orange shit-gibbon in the White House, spewing out hate, cruelty and stupidity, we've all started to get used to political cries of 'fake news'. In fact, it has become a useful way to spot an outright fuckwit, because only fuckwits resort to that obvious and odious meme when they see a news story they don't like.

But this dumbarse way of dealing with news you don't like has also spread to other parts of the media, and has now become a regular fixture in the worlds of sport and entertainment journalism.

Sports and entertainment reporters are regularly sneered at as not 'proper journalists' because they don't write about crime, politics or injustices, but these sections of the media are also big fat metaphors for everything, and there is a shit-tonne of money involved  in both areas.

These journalists still follow the same basic rules of news media - they try to report on events within their rounds with accuracy and knowledge, and try to stack up rumoured whispers as incontrovertible truth.

And sometimes, they'll have something juicy - something nobody else has - and it will be confirmed by trusted sources who can't go on the record. And even though there is no actual official confirmation coming, they're going to run with that story. They might have to word it very carefully, but you can bet your arse they're going to run it. It's their fucking job.

And when everyone goes to the people who can officially confirm this news after it has broken, they frequently find PR people and management representatives lashing back out at the reports, with an increasing tendency to claw away at the fake news idea.

This is where the money comes into it - there is so much capital at stake in sports and entertainment deals, nobody with any brains is going to give anything away. If, for instance, there are reports that a high-profile league player is looking at the switch to rugby, of course those representatives of that player are going to keep quiet about anything they have for the negotiations. You expect them to keep their mouth shut and get on with the job.

But an increasing number of them aren't just leaving it with the flat, classic 'no comment', they're lashing back at the reports themselves, crying out about bias and the reporter's personal agenda. It's somehow worked for the current US president and they look even tougher when they rock up to the negotiation table.

And if it turns out that a deal can be done, and the best league player in NZ ends up in an All Blacks jersey, well, the media are still going to report on it and will be too busy congratulating themselves on the scoop to really acknowledge that they'd been played again.

The most egregious example of all this in recent days is TVNZ's handling of their news show host bullshit. News sites reporting on their rivals' host issues isn't big or clever, but it gets fucking shitloads of clicks. People do actually read these stories, and more read about these shows than actually watch them.

So last year the NZ Herald figured out fairly early that it was almost certainly going to be something involving the mighty Hillary Barry and ran a story about it and TVNZ lost their fucking minds. They went full apoplectic and denied the reports with the fervor of somebody who is really trying to hide something. They even took the Herald to the goddamn Press Council over it.

The Council, in its own inimitable language, told TVNZ where to stick their complaint: 'Quite clearly the categorical denials from TVNZ have not stopped speculation within the industry, and that is what the story is reporting on.'
 
And then it turned out that the reports that Barry would team with Simon Dallow on the 6pm shift weren't right at all, so who knows why TVNZ gave up the moral high ground on the issue with its pissy complaining, instead of sticking with the 'no comment' line and winning the argument. It all didn't stop the Herald from later talking up the Barry/Wells combination om Seven Sharp, which they were dead right on.

TVNZ benefited from this kind of speculation and attention, with acres of free publicity in the nation's major media, but still went apeshit when that speculation actually happened. It might have had an impact on the overall negotiations between hosts and broadcaster, but it was all in the detail. The shows still got their hosts.

Instead, the executive branch of the state TV broadcaster tried to start up its own cries of fake news and muddy the waters of trust and authority, which is only going to come back and bite them in the arse. It can only be hoped that this kind of media in-fighting is an isolated incident, and not the new normal, but who the fuck knows anymore.

- Ron Troupe

81. We're all in this shithole together

The use of profanity in news publications and broadcasts has, in general, been getting more liberal for a while now. There are few words that are really not allowed in modern news, just the big swear words, and the vast majority of words that are unacceptable tend to be racist, sexist or homophobic language.

For a long time, subs could rely on a basic rule of thumb - if the Prime Minister or the Pope said it, it was fit for publication. But like everything else in this crazy, upside-down world of ours, that's been thrown right out the fucking window by the current President of the United States.

Donald Trump's reported use of the term 'shit-holes' to describe countries that were full of brown people sparked a lot of earnest discussion in newsrooms across the world, and New Zealand's media was no exception. Most of them went straight ahead and used the phrase without any censoring, while some came up with some impressively complicated ways of reporting on it, without ever actually using the word.

There is some irony in the news media losing their shit over the use of a swear word, because newsrooms are famously full of profanity. People whose job it is to produce straight-faced reports are only too happy to let fly with all sorts of vulgar language in the safety of a busy team of reporters, editors and producers. The more restrained they are on air or in print, the more they enjoy cutting loose when thousands of people aren't listening to them.

In fact, one of the few great perks of working in a newsroom full of broadcast journalists is getting to hear the most sensible voices in NZ media sound off with a healthy dose of words that would get them in deep shit if they ever went out over the air. John Campbell, for instance, is an absolutely legendary swearer, punching out profanity with as much passion as he puts into his social commentary, and there is all sorts of delight in hearing all the newsreaders slip in the odd unacceptable word when they're rehearsing for the next bulletin.

Of course, the use of such language by journos has inevitably led to claims of hypocrisy, because there have been so many news stories about Mr Trump's presidential language, when it's the kind of vocabulary that the media are only too happy to use in their daily lives.

But this misses the point of almost all of the coverage of Trump's shit-hole remark. The language doesn't matter, it just reinforces the odious opinion behind it, and that's the real story. It's not what he says, it what he means.

Profanity is never the actual point, it's a just a linguistic technique that puts the emphasis on something, that highlights a point, or shows how passionate about a particular subject the speaker is. It underscores their basic idea, it's not the actual idea itself.

In the case of Trump, it doesn't fucking matter what exact words he uses, the real story is that he was revealing his own racist tendencies, by writing off parts of the world as pure shitholes. His true feelings were exposed.

By using the shithole term, President Donald Trump wasn't just telling the world that he's a racist dick, he was telling us that he is a fucking racist dick.

Language is an ever-changing creature, and the way we decide what words are acceptable and which aren't inevitably change over the years. We're still a long way from seeing the words like fuck or cunt in headlines, but with the current shit-gibbon in the White House, who the hell know how long that is going to last.

- Katherine Grant

80. If you can't sell this...

Anybody working in the editorial department of a print publication in the past few years will have heard the same speech. They have probably heard it a few times.

They will be told that they have done some great work, and have reached and breached all their KPIs and goals, and have done a terrific job under stressful circumstances. They will always then be told that unfortunately, the sales and advertising teams have come nowhere near their targets, so editorial resources are going to be slashed again and the news team will need to do that same great job under the new conditions. They will need to do more with less.

There is probably a scientific equation that shows the impossibility of 'doing more with less', but you only have to look at the general deterioration in the quality of the product to see it for yourself.

Advertising has been coming up short for a long time now and the failure of a publication to rack up enough ads has been blamed on a lot of things in those years. For a long time the global financial collapse was used as a catch-all excuse for falling revenues, and the continued rise of the internet in the 21st century - and the continued expectation that all content should be free - hasn't helped matters, especially with the hoovering up of valuable bucks by tech giants like Google and Facebook.

It all contributes to that fall in advertising, and the accompanying spiral of a decline in overall quality and actual readership.

Still, as bad as things have been, there was always the hope that content that was strong enough would always attract the money; that if the end product was noticeably gaining an audience on the strength of its own writing, and did things like keeping a local focus, it would inevitably find advertising support.

But that hope took a kick in the fuckin' teeth this month with the revelation Paperboy would no longer be published.

An unashamedly Auckland publication, Paperboy had some strong writing and genuinely useful guides to local restaurants and attractions. It was properly multi-cultural in a way mainstream magazines rarely are, and had some surprisingly meaty articles. None of which helped it last more than a year.

There might be several reasons why Paperboy went bust - maybe Simon Wilson is right and it just needed to be a bit snarkier and get some gritty reviews in there - but the central reason given by the publisher still rings true: it just couldn't get the advertising to cover its costs.

Which is pretty fucking alarming, because Paperboy had huge readership and name recognition among some primo demographics - young people with loads of disposable income in the country's biggest city all read it, it was in all the inner city cafes and available wherever there was public transport. They printed 100k every time, and the display cases on the street were often running dry of new copies within a day or so, so they were certainly getting picked up and read.

And the advertising crew at Bauer still couldn't convince anybody to throw some advertising dough their way. And if it couldn't, what will?

The concerns about the revenue shortfall in news media companies has been building for years now, but it really feels like it's all about to come to a head. With the failure of the StuffMe merger, publishers shitting their pants over Facebook's latest moves and continued concerns at almost every publication in the country, the folding of Paperboy is a heavy suggestion that 2018 is going to be the year the shit really hits the fan, and it's going to get fucking everywhere.

All we can do is close our mouths and hold our breaths until it settles. Happy new year!

- Steve Lombard

79: Signing out for the summer

Like a lot of the news industry, Media Scrum is taking a break for a month or so, because it's been a hell of a year, and we're going outside to sit in the sun for a while.

We've been ranting and raving for nearly a year now, and none of us thought we'd last that long, but we keep coming up with new things to moan about, so we're not going anywhere.

It's also a good chance for a bit of reflection. The Media Scrum crew have had the chance to expose some of their core beliefs on this site, and we're standing by all of them.

This is some of what we believe:

* The first rule of journalism is still 'fill the fucking space'.

* The second rule is 'you can't do journalism on an empty stomach'.

*The third rule is now apparently 'don't sexually abuse people, you fuckers', and we're embarrassed and ashamed that this has to be spelled out like this.

* The NZ news industry is full of great people doing tremendous work every single day, and most of them don't get enough recognition for their efforts, and it's no wonder so many of them are buggering off overseas.

* There are also some jerks.

* But no matter who they are, the hours are shit for everybody. No wonder it's becoming more of a young person's game.

* The news media is bigger than it looks, and can't be tied down as any one thing.

* Time is not on our side, and bullshit 'pivot to video' strategies are not helping.

* Scoops are everything, but they're not the only thing.

* Breaking news banners are broken.

* We're always falling down a photo hole, looking for that perfect shot. It doesn't mean we can just rip off a Facebook post for fun and profit.

* Never, ever read the comments.

* No, seriously, nobody gives a shit about your ideology

* Some people just want to burn the world down for the LOLs.

* You can't predict the weather or the traffic, but you can still report on it.

* The future is unwritten, but it won't be written by robots.

* There is great journalism everywhere, if you can be bothered to look.

* But too much 'look at me, look at me' going on.

* Anybody who keeps going on about fake news just sounds like a moron.

* We're too fucking white.

* We need to remember the easy mistakes.

* It's easy to laugh at the bloopers, but newsreaders are still humans under that make-up.

* Winston Peters is a total arsehole. Fuck him, a lot.

* The big news sites have far too much junk in their trunk.

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

* It's an endless cycle of bullshit, blatant disrespect and crap pay for journalists in this country, and we still fucking love it.

Happy holidays, everybody! See you in 2018.

78. You can't do journalism on an empty stomach

Journalists are dealing with a lot of shit these days, including shrinking newsrooms, vastly increased workloads and an audience that often gets downright hostile. The industry is rife with sexual harrassment, people are being served with legal papers because they did their fuckin' job, and people are just dicks to you, like, all the fucking time.

These are some big issues to wrestle with, but when it comes to getting through the workday, it's all about the food, because you just can't do good journalism on an empty stomach.

You can't come up with a proper intro or audio cut when you're stomach is grumbling away, and any kind of dedicated writing and editing requires some serious brain power, and all that mental processing needs fuel to keep you going, or you'll just crash, and get nothing done. If you're out in the field, you might spend hours sitting in a hot car waiting for somebody to show up, and any food is welcome on the stake-out.

And yet, journos have the worst eating habits, and can often blame the job for their nutritional deficiencies. Shift work has a lot to answer for - workers on the late shift might only be getting dinner-level hungry late in the day, and the options become terribly limited, and those who are forced to take lunch breaks in the late afternoon might have to chance the dodgy sushi in that shop across the road, or some other shitty fast food, because there ain't many other options.

Journos who are out the road might go most of a day without ever finding the time to cram something into their gob to keep them going, or could be way out in the middle of nowhere, far from civilization, with nothing but a half a pack of breath mints to keep them going. The killer adrenaline rush of chasing down a big news story will carry you a long, long way, but it can't do it forever.

Meanwhile, subs and online editors might find themselves chained to their desk for a full eight hours straight, barely able to pop out for a slimy dairy pie and a packet of Doritos. When you're working in the news business, anything could happen at any moment, and that's part of the appeal. But it also means a major international incident could break out while you're in the bathroom.

Plans for a decent lunch break can be totally wiped out when breaking news suddenly hits, right before you step away for a minute, and it can be a long time before you get the chance to sort something out again - breaking news is notoriously inconvenient like that

In the Ocean's 11 movies, there is a recurring joke where Brad Pitt's character is always eating weird snacks all through the films, whenever you see him. The actor's reasoning for this was his character was someone who was always wheeling and dealing, and never sat down for a proper meal, so just had to snack his way through the day to keep his energy levels up.

Working in a modern newsroom feels like that sometimes, even if only a select few of us are as pretty as Brad Pitt.  We'll gorge on foods that are full of saturated fats and sugar, because we've got too much work to do.

It gets good when it's election night or some other big event - those who have to work on Christmas Day (which, in newspapers, is always busier than Christmas eve, because you're always working one day ahead), usually get a decent spread to help alleviate the fact you can't spend it with your loved ones. At the very least, the poor souls working while everyone else is at the barbecue usually bring some kind of tasty treat into the office.

Because, make no mistake, even the most seasoned and jaded journos will seize upon any free food sent to the office, they will descend on it like fucking seagulls. It doesn't matter if a lot of the food that shows up comes from PR companies, most journos will just take the food and ignore the message. 

You can't actually buy a journalist with a doughnut, but they might still love you for it, for as long as the taste lingers.

Look, the news media isn't the only industry where workers can be struggling to keep their energy levels up as they work long hours. It's part of modern life. It's just that journalism is a business where you will crucified for missing out on some big breaking news, just because you needed to duck out and get a fuckin' burger, and you were stuck on a shift with no back-up.

No wonder so many reporters and editors and producers eat at their desk, it's the only way to keep going as the news piles up.

- Ron Troupe

77: Should Radio NZ use so much Māori language?

Āe.

Of course it fucking should. Keeping te reo alive is a mark of distinction and honour for this country, and anything that can be used to make it more ubiquitous must be encouraged and nurtured.

RNZ should use more - it's just one tiny step in the long road to overcoming the bullshit Maori have had to put up with for the past two centuries, but at least it's a step in the right direction.

There is no argument against this that isn't fundamentally racist, so there really isn't much more to say. Te reo is here to stay. 

Anybody who has a problem with that needs to grow the fuck up and join the 21st century. We won't be waiting for you to catch up for much longer.

- Perry White