There is still plenty of life left in print media, Good Local Media editor Roy Pilott told a Linkedin Hamilton event at Ebbett’s showroom at The Base.
Roy Pilott
Pilott was invited with Phillip Quay and Himanshu Parmar to discuss the changing face of media with an audience of about 40 businesspeople. He said news, film and music had been challenged by technological advances.
“In 1988 video rentals were drawing more revenue than the box office and the future of the film industry was in doubt,” he said. “The emergence of the world wide web saw music being shared free and the same doubts were raised about the future of that industry.
“But digital media has ensured the future of both – we rent and buy the latest films online, and through subscriptions to the likes of Spotify we pay more for music than we ever did.”
He said the news media’s response to the challenges of the digital words was more problematic and still not resolved.
Introductions please, from left Phillip Quay, Himanshu Parmar, Roy Pilott and Daniel Hopper.
“When the UK media put their stories up online, the publishers had the comfort of knowing the likes of the Sun and Mirror would still be snapped up by the morning commuters.
“But the New Zealand market was different – we had an extremely high subscription rate to newspapers, and the move by major media companies to make news available when and where readers wanted it impacted heavily on print sales.”
He said while he did not necessarily agree with providing news free without an immediate paywall and there had been subsequent closures of many mastheads, the fact both national media newspaper publishing companies were still leading the way in providing news in New Zealand justified those decisions.
He said Good Local Media – which publishes the Cambridge News, Te Awamutu News, King Country News, Bay of Plenty and Waikato business newspapers employed a different model to national publishers.
Almost all its journalists – including a trio with a combined total of about 150 years in the industry – were employed on part time contracts. Good Local Media has an office in Victoria St Cambridge, but it is used predominantly by advertising and layout staff – journalists work from home. It’s newspapers – all free – are eagerly snapped up and contained news which had not yet appeared online.
He said the model – which relied on advertising as its sole source of funding – was working. But it faced challenges. More and more organisations were testing the water to get publicity by investing in social media and communications advisors – then expecting free publicity from their “local” paper – claiming they didn’t have an advertising budget.
It was vital communities which still had their own community papers and wanted to keep them supported them, he said.
Pilott spent 20 years at the Waikato Times, including as acting editor before completing his daily news career with a five year stint as editor of the Taranaki Daily News.
Participants listen in intently as Daniel Hopper introduces the panel.
Participants listen in intently.
