The Newshub saga is still rolling on as a developing story with further announcements due. It appears that Stuff may be taking over Newshub's TV3 News - which means a left-wing media monster is in the process of growing tentacles & getting bigger. There have been endless complaints about NZ's biased news media on Blogs like Basset, Brash & Hide, as well as Muriel Newman's Centre for Political Research & radio stations like The Platform. Many of them are viewed by wealthy business folks, who contribute articles like Bob Jones. With the Stuff-Newshub deal that is breaking news, what a missed opportunity for the NZ right. Why didn't any of our fat cats buy Newshub for $1 when they had the chance? Why didn't they take the opportunity to turn it around into NZ's best & most trusted news site, reporting high-quality left, centre & right-wing content, putting others to shame? If that deal has been snatched away from them by Stuff, then stop crying about our woefully biased media. You had the chance to change it and you didn't.
If you follow the advice of some media gurus then the "secret" to making money out of a platform like Newshub is tapping into its hundreds of thousands of users & finding ways of connecting them up. The media bucks these days come from "connecting" ones users, not selling them news "content" - the content is there to attract users who want quality news. Once you've attracted them, the challenge is to make money out of them in other ways. The Herald lost its value when TradeMe took its classifieds away & became a billion dollar business almost overnight. TradeMe connected up the Herald's readership who wanted to buy & sell stuff and the Herald was too slow to respond. Other newspapers overseas like Shibsted in Norway did the opposite - it responded fast as it began to lose the classifieds. Shibsted leveraged its news readership base to the extent that now its core businesses are "online marketplaces with a strong focus on sustainability, media houses promoting trust & transparency, financial services helping to empower people in their daily lives". It bought EBay's Classifieds and is now the largest online market provider in the world.
Its tiring to hear NZ's so-called "business community", many of our most wealthy business owners and high ranking commercial types complain endlessly about the quality of our news services and not doing anything about it. Maybe the problem doesn't lie with blaming our government for everything wrong in NZ - maybe the blame lies more with our current crop of disappointing, un-inspirational business owners who want to fit in and jump on politically correct bandwagons so they don't attract trouble. Where are our Elon Musks? Maybe the Kiwi ones just sell-out for the quiet life at Omaha, Waiheke & Pauanui, content with running their little monopoly and watching the bucks - and waves - roll in. You will pay the price - the country has served you well, but will not serve your children and grandchildren well.