Yes, Corin Dann is really, really excited about business, but he\u2019s not the only Dann to feel that way. His older brother Liam is the business editor-at-large at the NZ Herald, and, like Corin, has spent the last two decades writing<\/a> and talking<\/a> about the rich and intriguing mysteries of the economy. Occasionally, they say, people get them confused. Of course they do! Two brothers becoming experts in the same industry on the same topic. How did that even happen?<\/p>\n In a way, the Dann brothers are as surprised about it as anyone. This is not what they imagined their adult lives would look like. They were self-described bogans, who grew up in Christchurch more focused on music and surfing than money and the economy.<\/p>\n As teenagers, they would drive around with their mates, listening to AC\/DC and Metallica and drinking up in the hills. \u201cThere was a period where I just grew my hair long and wanted to surf and make pottery,\u201d Liam recalls, while Corin remembers the time his brother went \u201cfull Jim Morrison\u201d. \u201cThere was a great hippie phase before the bogan phase,\u201d he says.\u00a0<\/p>\n Even when they discovered journalism, Liam wanted to be a music journalist (he dabbles in DJing now) and Corin, inspired by his brother\u2019s reporting,\u00a0 wanted to become a sports journalist. It was their other sibling, Corin\u2019s twin Amy, who was the real business brain of the family \u2013 she now runs a successful bookkeeping company.<\/p>\n But, looking back, they can now see that the seeds of their future careers were planted early.\u00a0<\/p>\n The brothers credit their primary school teacher parents with fostering an early love of information. Morning Report was constantly on the radio, while newspapers, Time magazines and The Listener were always scattered around the house. This was the 1970s and 80s and the big political moments of that era \u2013 Muldoon and carless days, the free market of the 80s, election nights on the television \u2013 played out in the background of their childhoods.<\/p>\n \u201cWe probably just took it for granted,\u201d Liam remembers of growing up in a news and current affairs-aware family. \u201cIt was just always there, and Dad ranting at the TV news was just normal.\u201d<\/p>\n Corin\u2019s dream of being a sports journalist came true, after he landed a job as a sports reporter for RNZ, but it didn\u2019t last long. \u201cI was covering the 1998 rugby season, and the All Blacks lost five tests in a row. I just wasn\u2019t coping,\u201d he laughs.\u00a0<\/p>\n That\u2019s when he set his sights on the parliamentary press gallery, and political reporting roles with Newstalk ZB and RNZ soon followed. He fell into business reporting almost accidentally, after writing a few business pieces for RNZ that would lead him to become their economics correspondent. Later, Corin made the move to television and hosted TVNZ\u2019s new early morning show Business, then presented Breakfast and Q&A, and was TVNZ political editor.\u00a0<\/p>\n Liam, meanwhile, spent a couple of years reporting for community newspapers in Tauranga and Auckland before he headed to London in the late 90s for his OE. There, he worked in low-level banking jobs, soaking up his first introduction to the finance industry. \u201cIt was as much about learning to wear a suit and tie every day as it was about learning business,\u201d he remembers. He returned to Aotearoa in the early 2000s and wore that same suit and tie to land a job in the business team at the Sunday Star-Times. It immediately felt like a natural fit, a fascinating new world to discover. \u201cIt wasn\u2019t my world, but it was kind of an intellectual world, which there aren\u2019t that many spaces for in modern journalism.\u201d<\/p>\n Liam became business editor of the NZ Herald right as the global financial crisis hit in 2008, and watched as the finance news shifted from the back page of the newspaper to the very front. He remembers feeling sick to his stomach on the day Lehman Brothers went bankrupt. Explaining what was going on in the global economy had never been more important, nor more intense. Corin was also presenting a daily television show, despite having never worked in television before. \u201cI really relied on Liam a lot at this time. I was freaking out\u2026 it was just carnage,\u201d he recalls.\u00a0<\/p>\n Since then, the pair have reported in parallel on the continually shifting tides of our economy, through events like Covid-19 pandemic, war in Gaza and Cyclone Gabrielle. Even as Corin\u2019s new role brings their jobs even closer together, they reckon there\u2019s no competitiveness or sibling rivalry. \u201cHis new job is business editor, whereas mine is business editor-at-large,\u201d Liam deadpans.<\/p>\n Besides, they reckon, they don\u2019t spend a lot of time at family get-togethers talking about the economy.\u201cThere\u2019s usually a very intense burst of catching up on politics and economics,\u201d Corin says.\u00a0 Liam reckons those discussions never last for long, though, as they quickly revert back\u00a0 to their roles as two bogan brothers from Cashmere. \u201cWe usually end up just talking music.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Journalists Corin and Liam Dann tell The Spinoff why they really, really love business.\u00a0 The tears flowed on…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":378686,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[197192,138,197193,42,197194,1073,143603,43,45,40,38,41,39,6445],"class_list":{"0":"post-378685","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-bogans","9":"tag-business","10":"tag-corin-dann","11":"tag-headlines","12":"tag-liam-dann","13":"tag-media","14":"tag-morning-report","15":"tag-news","16":"tag-rnz","17":"tag-top-news","18":"tag-top-stories","19":"tag-topnews","20":"tag-topstories","21":"tag-tvnz"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/378685","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=378685"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/378685\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/378686"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=378685"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=378685"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=378685"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Corin Dann reports on the 2024 US Election from America (Photo: RNZ\/Nick Monro)<\/p>\n
Amy, Liam and Corin Dann in 1982 (Photo: Liam Dann)<\/p>\n
Liam and Corin Dann celebrate Liam\u2019s daughter Ellie\u2019s 21st birthday last December (Photo: Liam Dann)<\/p>\n