50,000 Kiwis missed this

Written By: - Date published: 3:13 pm, April 8th, 2010 - 28 comments
Categories: news - Tags:

According to Roy Morgan, the Herald lost 50,000 readers last year compared to 2008, an achievement only surpassed by the Sunday Star-Times, which shed 107,000 (17%!).

Funnily enough, that didn’t make the newsworthiness grade for our newspaper of record but this Easter Sunday piece by Matt Nippert (who last came to our attention by running a smear piece on Labour with no attempt at balance but whom I’m assured is still promising, has been promising for nearly a decade, in fact) did.

As mickysavage reveals, it’s a laughably bad piece of work and clearly hasn’t been sub-ed or fact-checked:

Anyone read the Herald this morning? There is this fascinating article about how there is a new group of working class conservatives and some comments about the last election.

Did you know,

1. Labour lost 4 ‘middle electorates’. I thought it was only three?
2. Sam Lotu Liga bet Mark Gosche, I must ask Carol Beaumont about this.
3. Pansy Wong winning Botany was a surprise, as if.
4. Paula Bennett ‘stormed home’ in Waitakere, if you count winning by 600 votes ‘storming home’.
5. John Banks has a chance of being the Super City Mayor, yeah right!
6. An opinion poll from 5 months ago is quoted as evidence of continued support.

They quote someone who was impressed by National because it has a ‘long term’ view. I must check up the meaning of that phrase because it seems to have changed dramatically.

Someone else voted National because she wanted more people paying tax. Boy she must be disappointed now.

Another on a low income because she would get a tax cut. I wonder if she could sue for a broken promise.

An accountant voting National is offered as evidence of the decline in Labour’s fortune.

According to Stephen Joyce ‘The war for the Beehive, he says, was been won in places like Waitakere.’ Give that man a dictionary!

In the most telling statement a woman in Onehunga stated ‘I don’t think so, they just haven’t hit the right balance between what people want and what’s good for the company sorry country.’

She was right first time!

Micky concludes by wondering if the article was some kind of late April Fool’s joke. I’m left wondering if there’s a link with the quality of journalism in the Herald and those 50,000 lost readers… nah.

28 comments on “50,000 Kiwis missed this ”

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  1. Fisiani 1
    8 April 2010 at 3:28 pm

    107,000 readers lost from the Labourist Sunday Star Times. Oh dear. So sad. Must be the recession or a National honeymoon.

  2. tc 2
    8 April 2010 at 3:55 pm

    The slippery slide continues for fishwrap as that’s all it’s worth……the ‘value add’ comes to mind when all you do is parrot pollys and have biased commentators (right/left either way) then what’s your reason to buy it ?
    Unless you provide objective intelligent journalism that stimulate the readers your toast.
    Then there’s that nagging issue of factual accuracy……the prosecution rests now.

  3. Con 3
    8 April 2010 at 3:59 pm

    OK so the Herald’s lost 7.53% of its readers.

    It’s not a good look for Granny Herald in particular, but of course the entire newspaper industry is in a state of collapse. Newspapers are shutting up shop left, right and centre. Most of the newspapers in Roy Morgan’s list will be gone within a few years.

  4. mcflock 4
    8 April 2010 at 4:36 pm

    Yep, and the fact is that the better newspaper staff see the writing on the wall and are jumping as quickly as possible (oftern to PR), leaving only a few veterans who are sentimentalists for the medium behind. And the less-competent staff who can’t jump ship aren’t having their idiocy picked up as much because there are fewer sub-editors.

  5. Quoth the Raven 5
    8 April 2010 at 5:07 pm

    On a related note I see this: But How Could Wikileaks Break A Story Without Traditional Newspaper Backing?

    By now you’ve likely seen the rather horrifying Collateral Murder website, put together from the video leaked to Wikileaks (for which, apparently, US intelligence officials investigated some of the Wikileaks folks). While there’s a lot of ongoing back-and-forth over what the video really shows, there’s no doubt that the release of the video is a journalistic scoop.

    And yet, we keep being told that if newspapers fail, no one will be left to do investigative journalism?

  6. Scott 6
    8 April 2010 at 5:10 pm

    The print media in this country is in a fairly poor shape. There isn’t much quality investigative journalism done, and often the only good material is stuff they’ve reprinted from other media ouitlets. The Sunday rags are in a particularly dire state. Frankly I wouldn’t wipe my behind on any of them.

    The decline into tabloidism is partly to blame. But also savage cost cutting. It’s a vicious cycle. Newspapers have suffered a decline in readership numbers so have cut costs. Their quality has declined as a result, and this has led to further declines in readership numbers.

    I get the Harold free through work. I wouldn’t pay for it.

  7. Anne 7
    8 April 2010 at 5:14 pm

    Cancelled the Herald about six months ago. Gone the way of the old-style Dom. in the 70s and 80s
    – a 3 minute wonder.

    Am about to cancel the SST. Used to have some good investigative journalism and good quality commentators. Has turned into a largely mindless rag playing on people’s shallow prejudices.

    • Armchair Critic 7.1
      9 April 2010 at 10:14 am

      Granny gave me a month of free papers last year. Thanks Granny.
      It was inevitable that with a week to go they would ask if I wanted to pay for an ongoing subscription, and I was considering it seriously. Then they came out on Paula Bennett’s side about the release of personal information, and any chance they had of getting me to subscribe was gone.

  8. Rex Widerstrom 8
    8 April 2010 at 5:15 pm

    Yes yes, shoddy journalism. But what else does this tell us?

    That there seems to be a vast number of indelibly stupid people wandering about waiting to be vox popped. And they all vote.

    The more I read vox pop stories, the more firmly I adhere to my assertion that a compulsory IQ test ought to be introduced prior to qualifying for a ballot paper :-/

  9. ianmac 9
    8 April 2010 at 5:44 pm

    As an aside I see that the Listener has dropped numbers as well. After about 50 years of reading I gave up and cancelled my sub. Picked up a copy today to just read/not buy and after a lurid violent cover and vacuous interior I think I did the right thing. The Herald? I only read the Herald on-line. Good marks for layout but tired of the lopsided lines and pro govt propoganda without scrutiny.

  10. PK 10
    8 April 2010 at 7:04 pm

    Probably a consequence of online newspapers?

    In terms of the SST that is also due to the Herald on Sunday taking a greater share of the Auckland market?

    ***Bright Red
    8 April 2010 at 5:24 pm
    well he promoting racist policies he deserved comparison with other racists. and that was five years ago I’m guessing.***

    Name one. From memory he was promoting the removal of racist policies and calling for one law for all.

  11. mickysavage 11
    8 April 2010 at 9:11 pm

    Er thanks for the quote.

    I think this (decline and extinction of the MSM) is an irreversable phenomenon. The corportisation of the media has meant that the dollar is king and the expensive stuff, proper research and indepth stories, is being cut.

    But it is a never ending cycle, the papers get worse, readers give up, profits go down, story gathering and writing is cut, the paper gets worse …

    Congrats to the Standard. The number of stories that I see that are developed here, subject to intense research and development and then seized on by the Herald a couple of days later is considerable. It is like all the reporters do is read the blogs.

    Maybe that is all they can afford to do now.

  12. Jenny 12
    9 April 2010 at 4:38 am

    Calling all Citizen Journos

    With the dome busters being retried in a Civil Trial, the stalwart members of the press might decide to redeem themselves and actually deliver some reportage from the hearings.

    Then again. they may not.

    As the linked report from John Minto shows, the previous standard of coverage of the Jury Trial by the Main Stream Media was dire, in the extreme.

    http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL1003/S00278.htm

    The Civil Trial could be even more interesting. For the first time the spooks who run Whaihopai (who are usually a law unto themselves), have suggested that they might give evidence in support of what they do. The GCSB may have been flushed out into the open, because the prosecution at the Jury Trial just couldn’t refute the evidence from Katherine Gun…. the expert witness called by the defence, whose testimony, by all accounts was riveting and was the making of the case with the jury.

    Katherine Gun’s evidence was so telling that the GCSB and Waihopai were left looking as guilty as sin. This was what, was not being reported in the Mainstream Media

    Will the MSM cover the trial this time around, or will they continue their apparent policy of self censorship around the facts of this case?

    Time will tell.

    This stand off could not be just a New Zealand first, it could be a world first.

    For the first time in we may get to see supporters of the War on Terror, and the Intelligence community and peace activists squaring off in public court.

    Will it all be ignored by the MSM?

    Who knows.

    Will the fascinating charge and countercharge, thrust and parry of this civil case be reported in the MSM, with the same coverage they usually only reserve for the details of a sordid criminal trial, or celebrity sex scandal?

    We will just have to wait and see.

    In case the shrinking violets of the MSM stand back from the breach again, it may be all up to you, my internet savvy citizen journos.

    Who wants to make a name for themselves?

    With the MSM distracted with Tiger Woods return to golf, the field is open.

    Just take a week off work and blog to the world from court.

    To paraphrase, Julian Assange of Wiki Leaks, “For the first time in history (thanks to the internet) we now have a truly free press.”

    • Jenny 12.1
      9 April 2010 at 4:48 am

      P.S. I might be bold enough to add, this is why people are deserting the Mainstream Media outlets like the Herald and the SST by the thousands.

      • Jenny 12.1.1
        9 April 2010 at 4:56 am

        P.S., P.S. Why haven’t we got a local Kiwi version of Wikipedia here in NZ to keep the bastards honest?

        • Jenny 12.1.1.1
          9 April 2010 at 5:09 am

          P.S. P.S. P.S. Sorry, Wikipedia should have read Wikileaks. As in: Why haven’t we got a local Kiwi version of Wikileaks here in NZ……

          Sysops could you fix this one for me?

          Thanks J.

  13. vidiot 13
    9 April 2010 at 8:42 am

    “2. Sam Lotu Liga bet Mark Gosche, I must ask Carol Beaumont about this.”
    From the aticle “and burly Samoan rugby player Sam Lotu-Iiga claimed Maungakiekie from old-school unionist Mark Gosche.”

    Gosche was the sitting MP for Maungakeiekie, the current MP is Lotu-Iiga, yes he claimed the seat from Labour by beating Beaumont. Beaumont has never held the Maungakiekie seat.

  14. Sanctuary 14
    9 April 2010 at 10:05 am

    The reason why people are abandoning the traditional print media is that the internet has made the Murdoch business model – cut costs to the bone and replace serious journalism with cheap opinion and a sensationalist, emotive yellow press reporting style – obsolete. Why would you pay for biased, fact free right wing opinion when you can go to kiwiblog for free? Many websites – Norightturn & Gordon Campbell for example – feature both a frankly politically left wing world view and a standard of investigative journalism not even approached let alone equalled or surpassed by anything now on offer in the traditional print media. Murdoch himself is waking up to this – his churlish attacks on the inernet and his Canute like attempts to impose paywalls are hilarious and deeply satisfying to watch.

    I am not so sure the death of the traditional print media is as inevitable as some would have us believe. A constituency remains that is ready to pay for substantive news & current affairs journalism. A healthy democracy needs a strong fourth estate. We need to think about how we can achieve that. We need to consider, for example, if the funding model for organisations like Radio New Zealand ought to be extended and made contestable for private sector not-for-profit print media. Would tax payers resent subsidising to the tune several millions of dollars the wages of investigative journalists at Metro or the Listener or North and South? Or if subsidising Fairfax/APN sticks in the craw, what about if those magazines were sold off and their ownership converted to something akin to The Scott Trust Limited (owners of the Guardian Group)?

  15. tc 15
    9 April 2010 at 10:26 am

    “Beaumont has never held the Maungakiekie seat.” and never will with a lazy uninterested campaign like the one in 08…..Sam Lotu Liga was an energiser bunny during that campaign whilst Beaumont probably looked at her list position and went to bed comfy knowing she didn’t have to win it to get a seat at the trough.

    labour need to look very carefully for more hard working deserving candidates….her and Tizard being prime examples.

    • vidiot 15.1
      9 April 2010 at 11:10 am

      TC – she has started already ! Why only last week I personally received a letter from her (tax payer funded of course), which invited me to make a meeting with her to discuss things. Personally I think that type of approach is a bit dated and she needs to get out & about more.

      Having said that, I recently met her & the energiser bunny at a local school fair, and I can see why people voted for thumper, he just comes across so much better / enthused, Carol needs some PR skills as she was about as enthused as a dead fish. Every where that thumper went he had a colony of people around him, whereas Carol seemed to have none.