Herald on Sunday on Herald on Sunday
February 14th, 2010 at 12:09 pm by David FarrarShayne Currie writes his final editorial for the Herald on Sunday:
This is the 280th edition of the Herald on Sunday – and my last as editor. Some people will be relieved about this. Mike Hosking, perhaps. He’s not the paper’s biggest fan.
Charlotte Dawson has not really been a happy camper, either. She has always thought, wrongly, we have had it in for her and she takes particular offence at anything written by our irrepressible gossip columnist Rachel Glucina.
Thankfully, Hosking and Dawson aren’t the norm. In five years, we’ve grown our readership to more than 370,000, become the third-biggest newspaper in New Zealand, and won every major newspaper award.
It is no small thing to start a new newspaper from scratch. You need to earn every single reader, and the HoS has done very well in bringing back competition to the Sunday newspaper market. It is almost the only newspaper market in NZ where we still have choice.
Over the years we’ve become known as the property paper, the car crash paper, the Tony Veitch paper, the All Blacks paper and the Millie Elder paper. We don’t mind any of this.
We’ve always tried to adapt to what our readers want – and buy. Selling the paper is of utmost importance, and to achieve that it’s not always what might be considered the best, traditional journalism that makes the front page.
The front page has to excite, titillate and capture your interest within three seconds – we rely much more heavily on retail sales than a daily newspaper with its larger subscriber base. Of everything we do, the front page is always the most frequently discussed aspect of the HoS. (Except when we stuff up the crossword grid – then all hell breaks loose.)
That is a fair point about the lack of a subscriber base, so the need to give people a reason to buy the newspaper.
The worst thing we can do is be boring. A good guideline is National Radio. If its media commentators start tut-tutting about one of our stories, it usually means we’re on the right track. National Radio staff have no concept of working in a commercial market.
The point is, if we don’t sell the newspaper, we won’t have a product or pages to present the work of some of New Zealand’s best journalists and columnists.
The HoS is quite heavy with columnists, and relatively light on news reporting. But I actually quite like that as I get straight news reporting from other sources, and like getting analysis and opinion.
It will be interesting to see who gets appointed as the new editor, and what changes she or he may make to the paper.
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February 14th, 2010 at 12:35 pm
Newspapers are dying out. Unless they can sell their stories on the web, they’re heading for extinction.
Of course they can’t sell their stories on the web, for that’s where they’ve got real competition.
Who is really interested in the opinions of tired old Progressives like Kerry Woodham?
I would rather read CRUSADER RABBIT any day. Bite that makes the Herald on Sunday and its collection of wimpy left wing opinion writers look like a poodle convention.
Vote:February 14th, 2010 at 12:43 pm
Kerry is so so sounding like a worn out arabs sandal for sure…..
The future of the newspaper is an interesting one for sure…. I mean as the slow adopters get more used to a wireless network at home, the newspaper can be read at times when on the Kazi, anywhere in the house…..
I wonder how many actually just purchase a newspaper on a Sunday for habit, I have to say I do that a bit, if I am grabbing something from the dairy, I grab the paper…….
Vote:February 14th, 2010 at 12:54 pm
Another example of why newspapers are dying.
While the Herald on Sunday regales us with kiddie style gossip interspersed with clapped out socialist garbage from NZ’s own would be Fidel Castro (Matt McCarboard Carton), real journalists like Ian Wishart are running stories exposing the fraud of climate change , a con job the Herald and so much of the rest of the reactionary and out of touch mainstream media are still happy to propagandise for.
Vote:February 14th, 2010 at 1:28 pm
I’ve always thought the Herald on Sunday was too much of a, well, Sunday paper.
Why can’t it be more like the weekly Herald but just on Sunday rather than leaning more towards the Sunday News or any other one of those papers with page three girls?
It was a while ago I read it though, so maybe it has changed a bit.
Vote:February 14th, 2010 at 2:08 pm
I canceled my HOS & Herald subscriptions in early 2009 and never regretted it. They publish more useless gossips & greenie related news than real news.
Vote:February 14th, 2010 at 2:23 pm
Oddly – because it’s not usually the case – I quite look forward to the HoS’s opinion pages. More interesting than most of the other opinion regulars offered in other newspapers. It’s not just one good columnist, but basically all of them – if only Peter Williams was slightly more regular!
Vote:February 14th, 2010 at 3:14 pm
I agree with graeme. It is only the opinion pages that hold my interest. I rarely agree with them but enjoy reading them anyway.
Vote:The blogista classes often know the story before the dead tree press have switched the printer on but there are still a large proportion of the general public who read the papers and watch the news for their updates.
The best part of the HoS is its tabloid format. The bloody broadsheet papers are a nightmare to read at the cafe in the mornings
Send Peter Williams some prunes Graeme, that should fix it.
February 14th, 2010 at 3:14 pm
“real journalists like Ian Wishart are running stories exposing the fraud of climate change ”
Ahahaha, Thanks Red, stuck at work on a Sunday and I needed a laugh, brilliant! Wishart…. real journalist…… classic!!!
Vote:February 14th, 2010 at 6:53 pm
We cancelled our HoS sub in Nov 09. They rang last week and asked us why. I told the nice man with an Indian accent that it was a shit newspaper with too much gossip and manufactured news and I now get my news online.
Vote:February 14th, 2010 at 7:50 pm
Sally and Adam broke up- really!!!. Radio ”star???” suspended over Ali Mau. How well do you know your lover?? That was the front page today. I’m waiting for the Brangelina, Britney and Oprah hatchett jobs next.
Seriously if you want to be “People” magazine don’t represent yourself as a serious news provider.
Vote:February 14th, 2010 at 8:04 pm
I prefer to read the Sunday News if I buy a sunday paper. For the page 3 girls of course.
Vote:February 14th, 2010 at 9:50 pm
“Thankfully, Hosking and Dawson aren’t the norm. In five years, we’ve grown our readership to more than 370,000, become the third-biggest newspaper in New Zealand, and won every major newspaper award.”
YAWN
I haven’t subscribed to one for 10 years. And haven’t read one unless pointed to an article by someone for the same length of time. 98% regurgitated reuters crap, 1 sleeze story and one awwww piece.
I do read a lot of the LOCAL freebie however. It has more ORIGINAL NON-OPINION OR LIFESTYLE CONTENT than any of the national papers.
TV and (paid for) newspapers. You can have them. News on radio while in the car, and a few well picked blogs and information sites on the net, and I’m JUST as ignorant as the next bloke without the pretense I know stuff
Vote:February 14th, 2010 at 9:54 pm
I hope you didn’t buy those APN shares more than a year ago DPF. You’ve gotta be hurting even with the slight increase of late.
Vote:February 14th, 2010 at 10:06 pm
Took out a subscription for a month and hated it! It is drivel, and some of the columnists are not worth the ink.
There is no newspaper worth the fish and chips in New Zealand, whether on a weekday or a Sunday!
Vote:February 15th, 2010 at 12:24 am
That is a fair point about the lack of a subscriber base
Oh bollocks it is — when the Herald on Sunday was launched, it was being heavily marketed to the subscriber list of the country’s largest daily newspaper (which effectively holds a monopoly in New Zealand’s largest media market).
If the paper that had to issue a grovelling apology to Sharon Shipton for effectively fabricating a quote that she was leaving her husband (Shane should remember this — he signed it), is “on the right track” then it says more about the brain-death of print media in this country than anything else.
Vote:February 15th, 2010 at 12:30 am
Redbaiter stupid enough to think Ian Wishart and KG are in any sense credible. Hang on a minute they are one and the same person!
Like their beloved Sarah, stupidity masquerading as the common man.
If ever the common man was so crass or dumb.
Vote:February 15th, 2010 at 7:19 am
Gosh, this Shane Currie sounds like a poor bitter little man doesn’t he, judging by the first couple of paragraphs of this ‘editorial’.
I used to subscribe to the HOS and have it dellivered…. but honestly, it got so fucking boring that I cancelled my subscription. I think this was during their ‘property market’ phase. There was simply nothing of interest in it and after an hour poring through it looking for something to read I just saved the TV program guide and chucked it in the bin. It felt like an hour wasted and in the end I resented the incursion on my time.
The only good thing about this ‘newspaper’ is that they publish the week’s TV programs in it (I dunno… do they still do that?).
I get all my news and views from the internet and talkback radio now – and both of these media are not only really informative but also interactive.
Vote:February 15th, 2010 at 7:48 am
It is a vast and useful source, but there is a major potential drawback – it is too easy to fall into the trap of cherry picking news and views that fit your own worldview, rather than getting a wide worldview.
The tv magazine shows are mostly a waste of time apart from a bit of sometimes useful video footage, but MSM print (and internet) still serve a purpose of providing a wider coverage than many would get picking and choosing their own.
Blogs can help in diversity, if you are prepared to take notice of different views rather than rule out anything that is on a topic or from a poster you generally find disagreeable.
Vote:February 15th, 2010 at 8:12 am
OMG, I rarely have the time to devote to reading a paper and if I did the HOS wouldn’t be my choice.
Vote:February 15th, 2010 at 8:12 am
Why does the phrase “the human race is currently climbing that tree while we sit around making doucmentries about ourselves!” come to mind?
Vote:February 15th, 2010 at 8:13 am
Subscribing to any “news”paper equates to paying a voluntary tax on stupidity.
Vote:February 15th, 2010 at 8:33 am
howling at the moon rocks yeah!
Vote:February 15th, 2010 at 11:04 am
Howling at the Moon?
Have you read Eve’s Bite, Mike? I’m sure you have. I think there’s a reason why Ian self-publishes – I suspect most publishers wouldn’t touch that book or at the very least would need to edit it beyond all recognition. That book is very poorly written, full of non sequiturs, poorly made points, condescension and boasting*, conspiracy theories and Ian’s religious phobias (‘please don’t get me wrong, I really have nothing against gays, but of course they’re all child-stealing paedophiles and quite like Nazis..”).
*The chapter where is immodestly declares that he’s shown Richard Dawkins to be a complete fool and also disproved the core thesis of ‘The God Delusion’ was particularly toe-curling.
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