It was during a contentious community board meeting in 2016 that Auckland’s Devonport Flagstaff owner and editor Rob Drent realised something had gone quite wrong at the North Shore Times. Noticing the Times’ reporter had spent most of the meeting on her laptop and enquiring as to what she was doing, he learnt she was updating a story about an injury to a local cat. The story had been getting a lot of clicks, so her editor had instructed her to keep it going.
If sending a reporter to a meeting then having that reporter spend the meeting distracted by writing about something other than the meeting sounds to you like a “hmmm” for both journalism and business, the evidence would seem to bear you out. In July this year, along with Stuff’s six other remaining Auckland community titles, the 76-year-old North Shore Times closed for good.
It could be argued the closure of the Times and its stablemates was ultimately a mercy killing. “The way they were running them, and the products they were turning out, were a shadow of what they should have been and what they used to be,” says Drent. “It was an embarrassment to the industry in the end.”
He once kept a log in which, he says, he recorded three months of Times issues without a single picture of a local person. At one community board meeting, a security guard showed him a copy of the North Shore Times and said, “How come this paper’s got a picture of someone from Howick on the front page?”
On July 18, Drent penned an obituary for the Times in the Flagstaff, writing he was saddened by its loss … “Not for the skeleton of the paper it is now, but for the great paper it once was.”
Those involved in local news publishing tell a consistent story about the community titles closed by Stuff and NZME, The New Zealand Herald publisher which terminated 14 local papers last year: they lost focus on their local communities so people stopped reading them and advertisers stopped advertising in them. “People aren’t fooled by the centralisation model,” says Drent.
The failure of Stuff and NZME community titles has so dominated recent headlines you’d be forgiven for believing local newspapers are all dead or dying. But on the New Zealand Community Newspapers Association website you’ll see listed more than 70 titles nationwide. Even in the Auckland region, which has been particularly affected by the Stuff shutdowns, 16 titles remain.
In Hauraki district, The Valley Profile competed with long-running Stuff title the Hauraki Herald until the latter’s demise last year. Valley Profile editor Teresa Ramsey once worked for the Hauraki Herald as did two of her staff. She lamented the great paper it had once been. But by the time Stuff shut it, she says, it had no local reporters, no local advertising staff and no local presence.
Although it served an area spanning the Firth of Thames, Hauraki Plains, Thames, Paeroa, Coromandel Peninsula and Waihi for 45 years, in the end, she says, it was all run from Hamilton, several hours’ drive from the peninsula tip.
“How are you gonna get local stories?” Ramsey asks. “And nobody cared about it. And then it just died.”
Like Drent, she used her own paper to write an obituary for her competitor: “Over the past few years, the Hauraki Herald has been run from Stuff’s Hamilton office, with syndicated content not relevant to our area, and only one or two and sometimes no local stories at all, often written without the benefit of local knowledge.
“As a result, the publication turned into a shell of its former self.”
The Hauraki Herald’s Facebook page is still up but hasn’t been updated since 2020. The page still lists contact details for a journalist who hasn’t worked there for several years.
In the South Island, it’s the same story. The Nelson Tasman Leader was another of the Stuff newspapers closed in July. Its competitor is owned and run by Andrew Board, a former journalist who once worked on the Leader and was sad to see the way it lost connection with its community. Board says the local office closed, the reporters and sales team moved out of the area and much of the content was identical to that appearing in Stuff’s community papers in Auckland.
“A community newspaper needs to be connected to the community it’s serving, which seems quite obvious, but it’s that uniqueness that actually makes people fall in love with it,” says Board.
Board’s company, Top South Media, publishes five community papers including the Nelson Weekly, which covers the Tasman district, Nelson and Marlborough. He says he understands the drive for efficiency behind what he calls Stuff’s “cookie-cutter” approach to the now-closed titles. For instance, a column could be laid out once and run across many titles, saving hours of labour, but he says, “It’s just not the content that gets people excited or makes them want to pick up the paper.”
The lack of quality local content meant readers lost interest, which meant advertisers weren’t seeing results, which meant they stopped advertising, resulting in what he calls it “a spiral of doom”.
He believes the community titles weren’t a big enough part of the Stuff business for it to have much interest in them. In contrast, he says, “We throw a lot of effort at it and I think that’s what makes a difference and that’s why I think some of these independent publishers seem to be faring better.”
Out of focus
When Stuff (then Fairfax) bought the 100-year-old Rodney Times in 2005 and closed down its long-standing office in Warkworth, north of Auckland, people would go to the nearby office of competitor Mahurangi Matters asking to place classified ads in the Times.
“We would say, ‘I’m afraid you have to go to Ōrewa or call them,’” says Jannette Thompson, owner and general manager of Mahurangi Matters’ publisher Local Matters. “And then they moved to Auckland. Then they shifted their classifieds – I think you had to ring somebody in Bangkok or somewhere to place your classifieds.
“When a guy wants to advertise for 60 bucks a week or something, he doesn’t want to go through all that rigmarole. He just wants to walk in and get a pencil and write down his ad and pay you.”
After the closure of the Rodney Times, Mahurangi Matters ran a story containing a quote from the Times’ former owner Tony Cook, who sold the paper to Stuff in 2005. Of the paper’s subsequent demise, Cook said, “I saw the editorial become broad interest without a strong local community feel to it. They lost focus on what is central to a good community paper. The success of a community paper is the synergy they’ve got with the area, which is being the heart and soul of the community itself.”
Thompson says it matters that she drives on the roads she writes about. If the council does something stupid, she is personally affected by it.
Drent puts it another way: “We have skin in the game.”
That these are difficult times for news media is not in question. Google and Meta have taken a huge proportion of the advertising spend that once went to print media, plunging the industry into what AUT journalism lecturer Greg Treadwell describes as an “existential revenue crisis”.
The evidence is everywhere. Drent says he worked out he’s losing about $250,000 a year in ad revenue to Google and Meta. During research for this story, Dargaville-based Integrity Community Media, which published five titles and employed more than 20 staff, was placed in voluntary administration owing about $650,000.
Teresa Ramsey says her team has struggled to get advertisers back to newsprint. “We just keep it going as best we can. It has been really tough. But you just have to work with what you’ve got.”
The last time Auckland had fewer newspapers than it does now was roughly 170 years ago. According to a report on The Spinoff last year, New Zealand had 4071 journalists in 2006 but just 1674 by the beginning of 2024. Since then, we’ve had the closure of Newshub and large-scale job cuts at both TVNZ and NZME.
It’s a cruel irony then that the country’s local newspapers are finding it almost impossible to hire journalists. Drent says many senior journalists seem to be leaving for the better paid world of PR and communications, and he believes many younger people no longer see journalism as a viable career.
Bo Burns, who last year bought the Howick and Pakuranga (now Eastern) Times, has been looking for three journalists for the past three months and has just six applicants, none of whom have any journalism experience.
Ramsey describes the situation as “absolutely hopeless”. She recently hired a reporter she describes as a talented writer but who had never before written a news story nor worked in a newsroom.
David Mackenzie, of Good Local Media, which publishes weeklies or monthlies in Waikato, King Country and Bay of Plenty, has been looking for an intermediate or senior reporter in Te Kuiti since the start of this year.
Meanwhile, costs are climbing. With a week’s notice, Thompson’s print costs recently increased by 17%. After the Rodney Times closed, Mahurangi Matters reported the Times’ production costs had increased by 46% over the past two or three years.
Drent: “It’s much harder to make money these days.” Ramsey: “I’m happy if I’m just covering my costs, to be honest.”
Thompson’s Local Matters also publishes Hibiscus Matters, which circulates in the Whangaparāoa area not far from Warkworth, and added a new title, Mangawhai Focus, to the stable last year – “I think I was drunk”.
She admits to a sentimentalist streak. “I just think communities are poorer when they don’t have a community newspaper.”
Thompson says she likes to be on the side of the underdog – “the person who really finds it difficult to navigate through the bureaucracies that inhibit people understanding what’s going on. I’m happy to take on that fight for people with council, or whoever, on their behalf. You get a win and you just feel fantastic because it’s justice for somebody.”
Democratic role
“It would be easier and cheaper to produce advertising flyers, but that’s not why we’re here,” says Top South Media’s Andrew Board. “This is our community. My wife and I were born here, all of our staff are really engaged here. We have a real social conscience about what we’re doing here for the community.”
AUT’s Treadwell says local newspapers are a crucial part of a functioning society, “bringing scrutiny to local processes, both political and bureaucratic, because without that scrutiny at a local level, bureaucrats get away with murder.
“It’s all a bit obvious, this: it’s not rocket science that democracy needs good quality, verified information that we can all disagree with. But it’s got to be there.”
But Thompson says it’s getting harder to hold power to account because an increasing amount of council business is done behind closed doors in “workshops” from which journalists are excluded, meaning citizens are not able to see how decisions are made. She believes this is being done deliberately to avoid scrutiny.
Public notices threat
The relationship between councils and local newspapers is complex. Each needs the other, but in ways and quantities that are in constant flux. This can lead to flashpoints, such as in July when the Auckland Council withdrew all paid public notices for alcohol licensing applications from local newspapers, blaming “Stuff’s closure of its Auckland community papers and the Auckland Council District Licensing Committee’s subsequent decision to require public notices to be published online only”.
Whether other arms of the council will follow suit for things like road closure and water cut-off notifications is not yet clear. The council says public notices in community papers are considered on a case-by-case basis for things like annual plan consultations, biosecurity operations and pest control.
The loss of the liquor application ads caused uproar among community newspaper editors and owners, who saw it as a slap in the face for both their businesses and communities.
The council’s decision followed then local government minister Simeon Brown’s December announcement, as part of a cost-savings drive, that councils were no longer required to place public notice ads in newspapers. A Department of Internal Affairs report ahead of his decision stated public notices were “disproportionately costly for the value they offer” and “it is not the role of councils to contribute financially to traditional news media”.
Online-only publication of notices may disadvantage those without regular access to the internet, particularly ‘Māori, disabled people, Pacific peoples, people in social housing, seniors, un- and underemployed and remote communities’.
In an email to the Listener following the council’s withdrawal, Thompson wrote: “If central government is giving this direction to local government, then what hope have we got? Makes me want to pack up shop!”
The Internal Affairs report acknowledged online-only publication of notices may disadvantage those without regular access to the internet, particularly “Māori, disabled people, Pacific peoples, people in social housing, seniors, un- and underemployed and remote communities”. It went on: “Many of these groups are already some of the least likely to participate in public council decision-making processes. There is some risk that moving to a council website-only approach may further disadvantage these groups. However, consultation with these groups has not been possible and as a result we do not have their perspectives on potential changes and associated impacts.”
In other words: this move may further disadvantage a number of already disadvantaged groups, but because we haven’t talked to them about it, we don’t know how they feel about that. Nevertheless, the minister went ahead.
In an email to other local editors following the council’s decision, Waiheke Island’s Gulf News editor Merrie Hewetson wrote she was “gobsmacked”. “None of our own local board representatives or our ward councillor say they had heard of anything about this, nor did they think it was anything other than bonkers.”
Eastern Times’ Burns, who was copied in on the email in her role as deputy chair of the Howick Local Board, took up the issue with the council, eliciting, in part, the following response: “Due to the weekly local newspapers closing, the DLC [District Licensing Committee] secretary’s approved the publishing of public notices to be online only from mid-July.”
Burns replied she was very uncomfortable about the process leading to the decision. “The issue is, it was NOT all weekly newspapers closing, this was only Stuff’s publications, there are many Auckland papers still publishing including west, east, south and Waiheke, Devonport, etc.”
Good Local Media’s Mackenzie, in his role as president of the New Zealand Community Newspapers Association, added: “Independent community newspapers … are not driven solely on bottom-line profits. [They] understand the far greater role they have of keeping their readers informed and connected on what matters most in their community, and are presented in an engaging format that is easy for the readers to navigate and understand the content, which is why public notices adverts are highly read in local community newspapers, far superior than websites.”
Facebook friend
Asked by the Listener about the changing relationship between councils and community newspapers, Mackenzie says many councils pay to advertise on Facebook and other internationally owned platforms that pay minimal tax here, but are always keen to have local newspapers run their press releases for free.
Some councils are effectively becoming media organisations themselves, he says, with more staff in their communications departments than there are journalists in the newsrooms reporting on them. Increasingly, they seek to manage the dissemination of news and information about themselves. “I think we all know that’s not a healthy way to operate.”
Sam Broughton, Mayor of Selwyn District and president of Local Government New Zealand, said in a written statement the closure of regional newspapers was a concern for both councils and LGNZ. It believed the closures would affect voter turnout at next month’s local elections. “We believe the move will deprive many rural and provincial councils of a much-needed voice to their ratepayers,” he wrote.
“Community newspapers have long played a key role in councils sharing what’s happening locally – from roading, parks and emergency management to big decisions about the future of their region. These newspapers are also an effective two-way communication tool between council and the people they serve; particularly our older or more remote population who do not always have access to electronic media.
“In turn, reporters also play a vital role in holding local councils accountable. We believe strong coverage of local issues is essential to a healthy and informed democracy.”
Not all bad news
Even if things aren’t what they used to be in the community press sector, some balance sheets are healthy and growing. Andrew Board says Top South Media has been expanding for the past 10 years and its papers are bigger than ever. “We hear all the negative stories and we see what’s happening with the corporates but it’s just not our reality. It’s a bit weird.
“You just have to be really clever, work hard, and be prepared to build relationships with advertisers. If you can do that, and flesh out a model that allows you to then do the social good – the community good of telling great stories – then you’re on to a winner.”
Mackenzie says it’s possible to thrive as a local newspaper business and plenty of owner-operators are doing so. Success, he says, comes down to two things: “One, do you have the passion for it? And two, can you find the staff to support you?”
Though rising costs and economic pressures make these challenging times, he believes the issues are not unique to newspapers and don’t constitute an existential threat. “I firmly believe we will pop out the other side of this and carry on.”
Rob Drent says he has worked with his printers to get the print cost down and reduced the size of the Flagstaff to get a cheaper deal on stock.
Perhaps the most interesting development in local news in this country is in the Auckland suburb of Māngere, where Jo and Justin Latif run 275 Times. When they started in 2014, a business coach advised them to seek to expand. Instead they chose to hand over stewardship of the title to others for a few years to have more time with their then-young children. When they returned in 2022, they spurned the idea of growth and instead created what is believed to be New Zealand’s first charitable newspaper. It has a print edition circulated monthly and an active website and social media presence.
The purpose of 275 Times – the name is a nod to the local area phone prefix – as stated on the charities register is: “To alleviate hardship in Māngere, South Auckland, by informing and increasing the engagement with the civic, social, cultural and economic opportunities that can make a material difference to residents’ lives via a multi-platform media initiative.”
The Latifs say any profit they make goes back into the organisation. They say they don’t differ much from how a “normal” community newspaper might operate, except “we have just taken off the table the option of us getting rich from this”.
Although 275 Times still runs ads, Jo Latif says its charitable model means “we don’t have to be chasing advertising content to keep us afloat. We can stick to things that we think are really important, like our mentoring schemes, and it does open us up other sources of revenue, like donations from philanthropic sources.”
She says the charitable model means councils or foundations “can give us money knowing it’s going to good things and we’re not going to try to pocket the profit out of it.”
The Latifs hope to spread the gospel of community publishing, saying they’ve already been approached by people interested in starting newspapers in neighbouring suburbs and are keen to do whatever they can to help.
Most of the work on 275 Times is done by Jo, with help from Justin, a former editor of Stuff’s now-closed Manukau Courier, who juggles his input with a full-time job in communications. From the outside it appears a tiny operation. But when Jo’s mother was ill with cancer last year and died, the Latifs saw the way in which a local newspaper is far bigger than just the people running it.
With Jo taking time off to care for her mother, the couple were forced to skip one print edition. And when another issue made the printer, getting it out into the community was a problem, with Jo the sole delivery person. But word spread among 275’s community and volunteers stepped up, collecting the paper from the printer and making sure it reached readers. “It was really heartwarming to know people would do such a time-consuming thing for us,” she says.
It’s the sort of feel-good story you’re only likely to find in your local rag – if you’re lucky enough to still have one.