Queen’s Birthday Honours 2015: Gavin Ellis

“I still see the digital environment as the ultimate future of all newspapers but not necessarily on websites or mobile [devices] either. I think we’re yet to see the sort of journalism that newspapers could use in a digital format. We’re in an evolutionary phase and I don’t think we’ve seen the final iteration yet,” Gavin Ellis tells NBR ONLINE from his Lynfield home.

Dr Ellis has been made an officer of the New Zealand Order of Merit for services to journalism. He has had more than 40 years' experience in the profession, culminating in becoming editor and editor in chief of The New Zealand Herald from 1996 to 2005.

He started his career in 1965 writing for the Auckland Star in the Press Gallery. He stayed at the publication until the early 1970s and dabbled in PR before heading to the Sunday Herald, the Herald’s first attempt at a Sunday newspaper.

During his time at the NZ Herald, it won Newspaper of the Year three times, the Weekend Herald was launched and he oversaw one of the greatest changes in modern news media – the revolution of newspapers launching websites.

“My one regret about the Herald website – and it’s a regret every editor of my era will have – is that we didn’t start charging from day one.”

One of his proudest moments at the newspaper was when it published a recurring feature titled, “Our Children” in the early 2000s.

“The period of time of which I was most proud of was the extraordinary effort that was put into doing an audit of the plight of children in New Zealand. That led to some legislative changes in relation to child welfare. I believe that newspapers have a fundamental role in advocacy as well as reporting.”

Dr Ellis was instrumental in uniting print and broadcasting media in the Media Freedom Committee and advocating for freedom of expression. He was an executive board member and trustee of the National Knowledge Wave Conference from 2000 to 2003 and the Asia New Zealand Foundation from 2007 to 2012.

After retiring from the NZ Herald, he entered academia and started lecturing first in political studies and more recently in media, film and TV at the University of Auckland. There, he completed a masters of arts and PhD. His PhD thesis on the potential of trusts to enhance the quality of journalism was the basis of a book published in 2014 – Trust Ownership and the Future of News: Media moguls and white knights.

A brush with cancer temporarily put his academic career on hold but he has returned to lecture part-time and has appeared on air at Radio New Zealand as a media commentator since 2012.

Dr Ellis often gives his opinion on issues facing journalism on a Facebook group, the Kiwi Journalists Association. He co-founded the forum, which has more than 2000 present and former journalist members today.

He is currently involved with Ministry of Cultural and Heritage in a project that is looking at the role media can play in improving civics, knowledge and participation. He is also an adviser to the Science Media Centre and was one of two independent advisers to the judicial review of cameras at court last year.

Of the Queen's Birthday honour, he says there were many people who shared in it, including the colleagues with whom he had worked and, in particular, his wife Jenny Lynch (a former editor of the New Zealand Woman's Weekly) who had been his "rock and lifeline" over much of his career

Dr Ellis recently gave a presentation at a public relations conference where he laid out the state of news organisations in New Zealand.

In summary he said:

“I remain optimistic but it needs a lot of support. In particular, it needs the support of the public to ensure that we continue to have a media that’s relevant and holds power to account. One of the issues we have in this country is towering complacency and that has to stop. On its own the media won’t flourish – it needs public support.”

RAW DATA: Gavin Ellis PRINZ presentation (PDF here)