Comments on: Bad news in thinner media ranks

By: Erica

Erica — Sun, 17 May 2009 21:39:14 +0000

Congratulations to the many outstanding journalists recognised in Friday’s Qantas awards, of particular note the New Zealand Herald’s Chris Barton. His insightful and valuable work over decades earned him the Qantas Fellowship to Wolfson College in Cambridge. Let’ss hope in Cambridge Chris is given some respite from the increasingly gloom here in New Zealand as quality places to publish are becoming as rare as the kakapo. http://tinyurl.com/qnylcl

By: Simon

Simon — Fri, 15 May 2009 03:41:47 +0000

An article appeared in this morning’s ‘The Business Herald’ regarding thinning media ranks. In a survey from the States conducted by the Associated Press Managing Editors on how newspapers are coping with the current downturn, 71 percent of respondents said “cutbacks have somewhat affected or greatly affected the quality of coverage”. The article goes on to mention how newspapers are shrinking in order to cope with audience and advertising defection to the web. Having more ‘hyper- local” news and trimming down international stories is claimed to be a current tactic they are trying to concentrate more on in order to cope with reduced staff. I can think of at least one major NZ metropolitan newspaper that has trimmed down its international section within the past 6 months…

The timing of this article is ironic and a rather a cold comfort given tonight is the 36th Qantas Media Awards.

By: Erica

Erica — Thu, 14 May 2009 23:10:58 +0000

Paul you will have noticed Fairfax Magazines have opted for a 9 day working fortnight ..even more thinning of the news-ranks.

By: Erica

Erica — Fri, 08 May 2009 06:07:40 +0000

Journalism at a brass tacks level should provide a service to citizens, consumers, viewers, readers or whatever we want to identify people as with accurate and useful information. This information can then be used by its consumers to make choices. These choices range from purchasing safe baby food through to a voting in a political leader. Right now, as you so saliently point out Paul, a downsizing of the fourth estate is resulting in the shrinking of clear, correct and importantly locally focused information. Not helpful, not helpful at all.

By: Simone B

Simone B — Fri, 08 May 2009 03:29:30 +0000

Both examples are totally relevant to me Paul – and show the far-reaching influence (and accompanying responsibility) of the media. Firstly, my dentist told me on Monday that Bonjela was unsafe for my 7-month old – a comment she based on the overseas reports. Secondly, on reading about the criticism of UK baby food I checked the nutrition information label on a box of rusks in my cupboard – and confirmed they were not hamburger-like at all!