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Kim Knight
Senior Writer

Kim Knight is a Senior Writer for New Zealand's Herald.

I’m Kim Knight and I joined NZME in 2016 as a feature writer for Canvas magazine. More recently, I’ve become a senior writer in the NZ Herald news team. In 1989, journalism felt like a fast track to a more interesting life. Six months at Aoraki Polytechnic was quicker than a University degree and suddenly I was on the job. It’s easy to name check big overseas assignments - the Australian bush fires, or an investigation into the dairy industry’s demand for Indonesian-grown palm kernel feed. My favourite stories are less driven by the immediate news agenda - a deep dive into who might have stolen the Lindauer paintings or the backstory of Auckland's most "family" tree planted by a young Samoan man outside a state house bowled to make way for a motorway. Journalism has become increasingly personal. We write more first-person essays than I ever imagined, but I still prefer reportage that’s heavy on quotes. It’s a challenge and a joy to keep trying to see the world through someone else’s eyes. I did, eventually, go to University, studying part time for the Masters in Gastronomy that helps me write restaurant reviews for Canvas and fuels an obsession with food journalism. Is there another job in the world where you can wake up wondering about the history of fairy bread - and then spend the afternoon in the country’s only hundreds-and-thousands factory?

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