Murphy and Jennings to launch news site

Media industry veterans Tim Murphy and Mark Jennings have gone into business together and hope to launch a news site by the end of the year.

The duo’s company, Jennings Murphy, currently operates as a media consultancy firm with the tag line “all things media.”

But Messrs Jennings and Murphy have bigger plans in the pipeline: a news site that will be the media’s Farro Fresh and Nosh compared to its mainstream Countdown, New World and Pak N Save offerings, they say.

The pair met many years ago when Mr Jennings was head of news at TV3 and Mr Murphy was chief editor at the New Zealand Herald. Mr Jennings resigned from his Mediaworks post this year and Mr Murphy stepped down from the Herald last year. 

The site, which will provide general news, is in its early planning stages but the pair say it is not commercially viable to rely solely on display advertising.

“Advertising markets are tight and tough. But we also don’t envisage a paywall straight away as we realise you have to generate an audience,” Mr Murphy says.

The duo hopes the site will be bankrolled by a “foundation funding partner” and feature sponsored sections rather than individual sponsored stories (native advertising). This is an approach similar to thespinoff.co.nz, which both former editors have contributed to this year.

“We would also leave it open for people to make voluntary contributions in a sophisticated way if they want quality journalism,” Mr Murphy says.

Mainstream media players are swamping audiences with car crashes, crimes and cat stories, Mr Jennings says.

“Some of the very good stories that are done by journalists at those organisations seem to get buried. Our view is that you’d bring those stories up to the surface and make them easily accessible for people who don’t want to wade through that verbiage,” he says.

The site would not aim to be of the scale of Stuff or the NZ Herald, which have millions of unique visitors per week.

“We’ll cover sport, entertainment, and some business but we won’t pretend to be the NBR or a sports site either. We think it will be a working newsroom that also calls on good people who want to contribute to it,” Mr Murphy says.

They had similar editorial views when in their respective roles, Mr Jennings says.

“In the TV3 newsroom we really respected the Herald’s journalism and felt the Herald respected ours. We would end up following each other’s stories up,” he says.

The pair believe their extensive contact book in the media industry will give them a head start in their new venture.

“We know all the good people in the industry and we can access them, whether they be cameramen, editors, journalists, sub-editors or writers,” Mr Jennings says.

"Between us we know just about everybody. That's going to be one of our selling points... You don't work in these jobs in a relatively small country and not have contact with most decision makers, influencers and corporate entities. That's proving useful to us at this point."

So does this mean news companies NZME, Fairfax, TVNZ, Mediaworks and RNZ should fear their employees being poached? “It’s a very fluid situation,” Mr Murphy laughs.

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