Thomas Coughlan

So it’s Winston Peters who has ridden to the aid of the New Zealand media, throwing his weight behind the so-called Kiwishare model. Kiwishare is touted by NZME as a way of circumventing some of the Commerce Commission’s 2017 objections to the merger of Stuff Ltd and NZME, publishers of New Zealand’s two largest news websites, Stuff and NZHerald.

The ComCom initially objected to a merger on the basis it would concentrate the ownership of media assets, stifling media plurality.

It was particularly concerned with a lack of media plurality in smaller, regional centres.

The Kiwishare model is meant to overcome this by ringfencing certain titles and some of Stuff’s editorial operations.

It’s not hard to see why Peters would want to save regional titles. They’ve long been used as a way for politicians to speak directly to constituents. Many carry regular opinion columns from local MPs or candidates, which play a crucial role in raising their profile ahead of an election.

But local newspapers are also where the hammer blow has fallen the hardest. Newspapers are a heavily leveraged industry. Publishing requires a printing press, buckets of ink, mountains of paper and a fleet of delivery people willing to get up at ungodly hours.

In cities, this still makes financial sense, but it’s becoming increasingly difficult to justify for regional newspapers.

National news is different. Websites such as Stuff and NZHerald will always survive in some form. They’ll just become more national in focus: stories about central government and the All Blacks.

This is one reason to be particularly sceptical of Kiwishare: it can’t save regional newspapers. Only a combination of subscription growth and government funding, through something like RNZ’s sponsorship of a team of regional reporters, could do that. At the moment, the Kiwishare model guarantees this ringfencing for only two years anyway.

One thing that was scarcely mentioned in Peters’ press conference was precisely why media is in this pickle in the first place.The press needs some regulatory way of claiming income for the content Facebook and Google don’t pay for. A public subsidy wouldn’t hurt either.

The taxpayer already subsidies the film industry – a part of the media of far less importance to democracy – to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars a year. In 2018, the taxpayer doled out a subsidy of $120 million to international film productions alone. Nearly three times what it spent on RNZ.

What does it say about our culture that films like Nori Rollercoaster Boy, The Meg, and Sinbad and the Seven Galaxies have a greater claim on the public purse than good public journalism through RNZ?

Peters’ intervention doesn’t change the fact that Kiwishare will have to pass the sniff test with the Commerce Commission.

And in election year, the Government will have enough trouble on its hands trying to merge its own media companies: RNZ and TVNZ.

Peters’ intervention would help NZME consolidate its market position, but it does nothing to change the economic reality of producing news, bar kicking the can down the road for two more years.

It’s not hard to see why Peters would want to save regional titles. They’ve long been used as a way for politicians to speak directly to constituents.