{"id":469653,"date":"2026-06-10T05:20:08","date_gmt":"2026-06-10T05:20:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/469653\/"},"modified":"2026-06-10T05:20:08","modified_gmt":"2026-06-10T05:20:08","slug":"media-insider-metro-magazine-sold-and-saved","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/469653\/","title":{"rendered":"Media Insider: Metro magazine sold \u2013 and saved"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Herald reported last year that Metro was losing its four fulltime staff<\/a> \u2013 including the editor \u2013 as part of a radical shake-up of its business model.<\/p>\n

\"Metro'sMetro’s new owners and publishers, Hannah Kidd and Simon Farrell-Green. Photo \/ supplied<\/p>\n

Editor Henry Oliver penned a farewell editorial, \u201cGoodbye to all this\u201d, in issue 448, in which he paid tribute to the magazine and three other departing fulltime staff, food editor Charlotte Muru-Lanning, art director Sam Wieck and commercial director Lucy Janisch-Fitzgerald.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe magazine will be in new hands, with new ideas about what its role should be, what form it should take and how it should fit into the life of the city beyond 2025,\u201d Oliver wrote.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m sure it won\u2019t be the magazine I\u2019d make, that things will be done in ways I wouldn\u2019t do them, but that\u2019s also true of many of the versions of Metro that came before me.\u201d<\/p>\n

At the time, Metro publisher Still Group \u2013 owned by Japanese-New Zealand businessman Hideaki Fukutake \u2013 confirmed that there had been changes.<\/p>\n

\u201cI hope to get the finances back into a position where we can afford fulltime staff,\u201d Still projects director Sam Johnson told the Herald at the time. \u201cFor now, we are engaging guest editors.\u201d<\/p>\n

Under Johnson, the magazine produced issue 449 \u2013 a summer 2026 edition \u2013 but the print edition has since been on hold.<\/p>\n

\"Metro'sMetro’s most recent print edition was published last summer.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs many of you will be aware, the economics of print continue to tighten. Despite the care and effort that goes into each issue, the current model is no longer sustainable,\u201d Metro subscribers were advised in March.<\/p>\n

\u201cWith that in mind, we\u2019ve made the decision to pause regular print production for now, and shift our focus to Metro\u2019s digital, newsletter and event offerings, which we\u2019ll develop and share with you in due course.\u201d<\/p>\n

Farrell-Green and Kidd founded home architecture magazine Here in April 2020 after Bauer Media closed its New Zealand magazine operation. Farrell-Green had previously been an editor with the company.<\/p>\n

He and Kidd said today that the acquisition of Metro represented a significant milestone.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe believe in publishing and making things worth reading,\u201d Kidd said in a statement.<\/p>\n

\u201cHere has shown you can thrive as an independent title \u2013 leading with your values and doing things with heart. Those are things Metro has always done too.\u201d<\/p>\n

Metro was first published in 1981 \u2013 the year that the South African rugby team toured a riven New Zealand \u2013 under its famous and longest-serving editor, the late Warwick Roger. <\/p>\n

\"MetroMetro magazine’s pioneering editor, Warwick Roger. <\/p>\n

Its pages have showcased generations of New Zealand\u2019s finest journalists and writers and, in an era before the internet and well before social media, the musings of the most famous gossip columnist of all, Felicity Ferret.<\/p>\n

It was acquired by Still in 2023. <\/p>\n

\u201cWe want to acknowledge Still\u2019s guardianship and support in enabling the transition of the title to us,\u201d Farrell-Green said. <\/p>\n

\u201cWe don\u2019t take this on lightly \u2013 Metro is an iconic brand, and we\u2019re honoured to be its new guardians.\u201d<\/p>\n

Johnson said in the statement: \u201cWe always want to play the role that makes the most sense, whether owning, supporting, sponsoring, or passing on to others to help grow great New Zealand companies.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are delighted to have supported Simon and Hannah in building a consolidated magazine business to see Metro continue for T\u0101maki Makaurau Auckland.\u201d<\/p>\n

Farrell-Green and Kidd also announced today that art director Shannon Gibson would be joining the team. Gibson spent 17 years in London on the FT Weekend Magazine, a weekly supplement to the Financial Times. <\/p>\n

In his final editorial last year, Oliver said his length of service was \u201cby my count, second only (but a distant one) to that of founding editor Warwick Roger \u2013 an honour (or what this magazine might have once called a \u2018dubious achievement\u2019)\u201c.<\/p>\n

\u201cI mention only to highlight my hope that I will not keep it. From the next issue onwards, Metro will inevitably be a new and different version of itself, just as it has always been during its reinventions (sometimes by chance, sometimes by the times, sometimes by personnel, sometimes by force) over the years.<\/p>\n

\u201cAny publication that lasts 40+ years has to die and be reborn; to shed skin and start again; to find new ways to speak to and about the city; and (I\u2019m afraid it must be said) to work financially in a rapidly changing industry and a struggling economy.\u201d<\/p>\n

Metro previously faced an uncertain future when it was one of various titles that closed temporarily in 2020, after German publisher and then owner Bauer Media suddenly shut up shop in New Zealand at the start of the Covid pandemic.<\/p>\n

The magazine was eventually rescued by entrepreneur Simon Chesterman, who \u2013 in turn \u2013 sold it to Fukutake\u2019s Still Group in 2023.<\/p>\n

\u201cMetro has made a significant cultural offering to Auckland and New Zealand since 1981, which makes it special and enduring,\u201d Fukutake said in a statement, shortly after the acquisition was confirmed. <\/p>\n

\u201cI respect the work of the team and look forward to seeing the magazine grow its cultural reach in Auckland and around New Zealand.\u201d<\/p>\n

One of Metro\u2019s greatest pieces of journalism was published in June 1987 and exposed the practices of doctors at New Zealand\u2019s leading women\u2019s hospital. <\/p>\n

\u201cThe article by Sandra Coney and Phillida Bunkle led to a Commission of Inquiry, headed by Dame Silvia Cartwright, that helped strengthen patients\u2019 rights and saw the establishment of a national cervical screening programme,\u201c Metro reported.<\/p>\n

\"WhenWhen doctors are wrong it can be catastrophic, as Sandra Coney and Phillida Bunkle showed in their 1987 Metro magazine article An Unfortunate Experiment. Photo \/ NZME<\/p>\n

Coney told TVNZ in 2023: \u201cWe had a whisper from a friend who was at the Auckland medical school about a study that was going to come out that showed that women had not been properly treated with abnormal smears. <\/p>\n

\u201cWe knew it was serious right from the beginning \u2013 it was just putting together how it had happened.<\/p>\n

\u201cOne of our big worries was that no one would want to publish it, that they would be scared to put it out there.\u201d<\/p>\n

With the good came some bad \u2013 Metro was sued in 1994 by newspaper columnist Toni McRae after a reference to her in one of the Felicity Ferret columns. McRae was awarded damages of $375,000, later reduced to $100,000.<\/p>\n

Editor-at-Large Shayne Currie is one of New Zealand\u2019s most experienced senior journalists and media leaders. He has held executive and senior editorial roles at NZME including Managing Editor, NZ Herald Editor and Herald on Sunday Editor and has a small shareholding in NZME.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Herald reported last year that Metro was losing its four fulltime staff \u2013 including the editor \u2013…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":74922,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[95,1558,51691,156,9439,213821,2936,685,4974,1073,54181,3025,111,139,69,57,3227,17162,3235,14625,21638,17454,2963],"class_list":["post-469653","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-and","tag-been","tag-edition","tag-entertainment","tag-established","tag-illustrious","tag-insider","tag-last","tag-magazine","tag-media","tag-metro","tag-most","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-print","tag-published","tag-saved","tag-sold","tag-summer","tag-titles","tag-whose","tag-zealands"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/469653","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=469653"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/469653\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/74922"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=469653"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=469653"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=469653"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}