Fewer journalists are employed in New Zealand (about 1400) than by the New York Times, says Dr Gavin Ellis.
Photo: Used with permission
A former editor warns that news deserts are creeping up on us – and we might be ‘up to our ankles in sand’ already. If so, what does that mean?
In last week’s New Zealand Listener – under the headline ‘Fall and Rise of the Local Rag’, Greg Bruce tracked down community newspapers that “continue to fight the online tide”.
They don’t have to fight the big two newspaper publishers anymore.
Stuff and NZME have already given up on almost all their local and community papers, and even given them away in waves of cuts and selloffs in the past 10 years.
By the time they folded for good, many of those papers were a shadow of their past selves, with little truly local content and few journalists employed to create it, but where there’s no newspaper, that often means no local news and no journalists gathering it at all.
Bruce’s article featured independent publishers and editors still putting out local papers round the country – and even launching new ones.
For example, Top South Media, run by Andrew Board, publishes five papers, including the long-established Nelson Weekly.
Further north, David Mackenzie of Good Local Media publishes weeklies and monthlies in Waikato, King Country and Bay of Plenty. He told the Listener he had been looking for a reporter in Te Kuiti.
Google, Meta and other offshore online operators now get most of the revenue from ads – and the costs of printing and publishing local papers are rising fast.
When it comes to reporters in the regions, mostly it’s been firing rather than hiring in recent years.
This is happening round the world, especially in the US, where substantial towns and cities that once had dozens of reporters at local news outlets now have none at all.
Last year, former New Zealand Herald editor-in-chief Gavin Ellis asked “if not journalists, then who” would “hold to account the elements that collectively make up our democratic nation”.
In a report for Koi Tū/The Centre for Informed Futures, where he is a research fellow, Dr Ellis warned New Zealand news media faced “extinction within a few years”, without urgent changes.
“We run the risk of following North America, Australia and the United Kingdom with the creation of ‘news deserts’,” he wrote. “Such areas have seen significant decline in political participation and civic engagement.”
In spite of its hyperactive and hypercompetitive news scene, seven percent of the United Kingdom population live in news deserts, after almost 300 local newspaper closures in the past two decades.
A quarter of Spain’s population live in what are considered news deserts. In Australia, 27 local authority areas have no local news outlets – and more than 200 regional newsrooms have closed in the past 10 years.
In a new Koi Tū paper out last Thursday – ‘News deserts: Local journalism at risk (PDF)’, Dr Ellis said: “In the unlikely event that we do not already have news deserts – at the very least, we stand ankle-deep in encroaching sand.”
“Here, there are fewer journalists employed in New Zealand – about 1400 – than are employed by the New York Times.”
Dr Gavin Ellis is a research fellow at Koi Tū/The Centre for Informed Futures.
Photo: Matt_Crawford
info@mattcrawfordp
“That statistic about the New York Times should resonate, because that’s simply not enough for a country of five million people,” Dr Ellis told Mediawatch.
“We believe that, by the time local candidates begin campaigning for the 2026 General Election, the phrase ‘news deserts’ will be in common use,” he wrote.
Dr Ellis said nothing much at corporate, local or central government level was happening to stop or slow it.
“The local government elections have really highlighted this,” he told Mediawatch. “Where I live in Auckland, there is now no community newspaper and I have seen no interrogation of local board-level candidates,”
What if people end up using a Facebook community group for news, rather than local news media? Many already do – or read local papers, as well as local news groups online.
Why would that be “detrimental to social cohesion and democratic health”, as his report claims?
“That hope was expressed through the term ‘citizen journalists’ – amateurs taking the place of journalists online. Studies in North America, in particular, have found that they do not fill the void.
“They may perhaps get the story about the local street upgrade, but they won’t hold the mayor or the councillors to account for profligate spending. Also those sites are vulnerable to capture by interest groups or individuals with an axe to grind.”
Ellis’ report has the example of Nelson City Council trying to use Facebook for civic communications – until the communications manager turned off Facebook comments.
“Despite the efforts of some community members who do their best to keep things civil, the comments are full of misplaced rage, unfair criticism of staff and misinformation,” they said at the time.
Is the demise of local news really imminent?
Greg Bruce’s Listener article on local newspapers still in print in a tough market.
Photo: New Zealand Listener
The Listener magazine noted the Community Newspapers Association represented 80 publications, and several enthusiastic publishers and editors.
In Taupō, Stuff and NZME have both closed their local papers since 2022.
One of them was bought by its own editor and is still going. It has teamed up with local radio station Lake FM, which now airs local news bulletins.
Can’t adaptations like that keep the deserts at bay?
“They can – but they need help. They’re finding it difficult to keep up with rising production costs, if they’re producing a print edition.”
Earlier this year, Stuff cited the cost of producing community papers rising by 46 percent since 2022 as the main reason for closing more of them.
The ‘News Deserts’ report sets out methods underway in other countries to sustain local news outlets.
“In the US, a lot of the states have tax credits. In the UK, they have them for things like renting space for offices.
“The government could find ways of minimising the impact of continually rising distribution costs.”
Last year, Local Government New Zealand called for the publicly funded Local Democracy Reporting (LDR) scheme – which employs reporters around the country – to be expanded to all regions.
The Taupō & Tūrangi Herald edition late last year, on the day news broke that publisher NZME planned to close it.
Photo: The Taupō & Tūrangi Herald
“That would be wonderful, but you’ve got to have the outlet for their work to be published in the first place,” Dr Ellis told Mediawatch. “It’s no good having a reporter based in central Hawke’s Bay, if there’s no news outlet.
“The news deserts are not fundamentally solved by simply putting a reporter in a local government area. It doesn’t have to be on paper – but there have to be ways of reaching people en masse with professionally produced public interest journalism.
“One fundamental thing is [local government minister] Simeon Brown rescinding his get-out-of-jail-free card to local bodies that they don’t have to advertise in local media any more. In California, it is mandated by law that they place a certain percentage of their advertising in local news media.
“We have yet to really see the way in which AI might be able to help to provide core local news. The other thing is a national hub for community news organisations… so that they don’t have to go to the expense of setting up apps and websites.
“The technology behind it and all the back-office stuff would be centralised, and if they have a community centre, why not give space to operate without rent?
“We really do not have robust legal structures. For example, donating to a news organisation is not a philanthropic purpose.
“It has to be done in a sort of backdoor way, as an educational contribution.”
US-based group rebuildlocalnews.org has a whole suite of measures in place in different parts of the US – including employment tax credits and a donation-doubling scheme called Newsmatch.
“A lot of our remedies are drawn from the solutions we can find elsewhere, which have worked,” Dr Ellis said.
Government on board?
In recent days, the government has moved to assist struggling regional airlines, and announced $70m to bring big events and concerts to the country.
Is this government likely to help local news? The current media minister’s plans for even the most modest media reform seem to have completely stalled.
“If turnout in the local body elections is historically low and particularly in areas where we’ve lost that local news coverage, that may be a wake-up call to them, but I fear that they have adopted… not even a laissez-faire attitude, but almost denial.
“It’s not just down to [media and communications minister] Paul Goldsmith. It’s not just down to the central government.
“It’s an issue for all of us, every one of us, because all of us have got a stake in it.”
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