Radio New Zealand’s Chairman recently wrote in a letter to the Minister for Media and communications that New Zealand’s journalism workforce was about 25% of what it was 15 years ago.
In a domestic political environment which has just scrapped the Broadcasting Standards Authority and an international landscape where one prominent politician in particular openly calls out reporters for creating ‘fake news’. The hollowing out of quality journalism is evident.
Newsrooms staffed by juniors on stagnating wages means stories that previously hit the headlines don’t get reported and regions are left under resourced. Where journalists were once tasked with holding public figures to account, these days, well, let’s hope they screw up on a slow news day so there’s enough reporters to cover it.
While the RNZ chairman’s numbers haven’t been confirmed anywhere, anyone who’s been in and around the media scene over the past two decades has seen a mass exodus.
Prior to the 2023 Census, journalist jobs were classified as newspaper or periodical editor, print, radio or television journalists.
In 2006 the number of these collective jobs totalled 4,071. In 2013 it was down to 3,525 and in 2018 it was down again to 3,381. In the 2023 Census the parameters seem to have changed where the category also wraps up other writers with journalists, so that figure looks unusable to get a clear grasp on how many practicing journalists there are in the country.
It’s important to remember that the last figure we have from 2018 was recorded before the carnage of the past 8 years, which included the enforced closure of Newshub and TVNZ’s Sunday programme, Fair Go, Midday and late night news bulletins.
Following these cuts and lucky for us, a Spinoff journalist did her own 2024 headcount, contacting each individual newsroom and arriving at 1,674 pre-cuts and an estimated 1,439 journalists in a job post-cuts. It’s deeply shocking what has happened, I’m one of those who had a media job and now doesn’t.
Fewer reporters means less scrutiny of councils, courts, business and government. It’s also harder than ever for organisations to get good news out there to the media, and many question if it’s even worth trying.
For those like us on the PR and Communications side, we need to work just that bit harder and be strategic about where to try and place stories.
Our ability to craft a press release for the time pressured journalist becomes an essential skill to have. Journalists and producers don’t want to receive your spam “generic press release to everyone.”
You know the ones, where management has had too much reign on the copy and now the press release reads like a board report, or better yet, a padded out linkedin post. It’s actually more important than ever, with dwindling journo numbers in mind, to deliver an actual story with clear action points into a newsroom.
I take my hat off to those journalists that are left.
I have spoken to a few old colleagues from my TV days this year who have returned from PR back to frontline journalism, one of them told me that it was ok as they had bought their house before the prices shot up and had invested well a decade ago. So what is journalism now? A rich man or woman’s hobby?
For those of us supporting large families and nursing some rather eye watering debt, being a journalist will remain our dream once we’ve paid off our mortgage!