Media Matters: All Blacks, all the time

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In this instalment of Media Matters, NBR Radio’s Andrew Patterson chats with Campbell Gibson and Nick Grant about the inner workings of New Zealand’s media industrial complex.

This week, of course, there’s only one story to discuss because only one thing of any significance happened on planet Earth during the past seven days.

Yes, [spoiler warning if you’ve just emerged from long-term coma or a bunker without any communication with the outside world: the All Blacks won the Rugby World Cup for an historic second consecutive time.

Even Mr Grant – who likes to strike a pose of indifference when it comes to NZ’s so-called national obsession – had to admit the game early on Sunday morning was an absolute corker. But he asks, does post-match hero worship really need to dominate our media (just as the pre-match prognostication did last week) in much the same way as the ABs dominated the Wallabies? Days after the match, the home pages of NZ’s two main news sites, in particular, remained in a state of besotted virtual Black-out.

(It’s not that NBR is immune, mind you – there’s this story on our site, for instance, although it does have a business angle, and at least a couple of columns in this week’s print edition draw on All Black lore and metaphor.)

As far as the selection of home page news stories goes, Mr Gibson points to a panel discussion RNZ recently recorded and posted on its burgeoning website in which The Spinoff’s Duncan Greive notes that “The homepage is essentially edited by all of us, as things that don’t rate well disappear from it pretty quickly.” Which is a fair enough argument up to a point, it’s agreed, but surely the exercise of some sort of editorial intelligence is as important, if not more so, than being completely customer-led?

Speaking of RNZ, until very recently known as Radio New Zealand, staff at the public broadcaster have apparently been given a script to read when taking calls from some of its disgruntled hardcore listeners. There are some, it seems, who don’t like change of any sort, not matter how superficial and – given RNZ’s continuing concerted push into online and, shortly, video – logical.

Also discussed: why it’s really, really important to double-check your headline when posting a story that bags another media outlet. 

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