Analysis: Q+A presenter Jack Tame says the alarming fall in the number of journalists in NZ is bad for all of us.
Journalism lost more jobs this week than at any other point in New Zealand history.
It’s hardly as though we were starting from a high base.
According to reporting and research from The Spinoff, when Facebook launched in New Zealand in 2006 there were more than 4000 journalists operating in New Zealand.
Once the current job losses are all realised, there will be fewer than 1500.
As a baseline figure those numbers are bad enough, but to fully appreciate the scale of change within the journalism sector, it’s worth considering the numbers relative to New Zealand’s growing population.
In 2006, New Zealand had one journalist for every 1000 people. Come July, after Sunday and Fair Go are taken off air and once Newshub officially ends operations, we will be down to one journalist for roughly every 3500 New Zealanders.
It’s also worth acknowledging that during this period, the nature of journalism work has fundamentally changed. Few journalists are bound by the traditional daily or long-form deadlines. In a 24/7 news cycle, many journalists face relentless pressure to churn out content as fast as it can be produced.
Almost 300 positions to go in Newshub closure, TVNZ calls time on Sunday show.
From a news consumer’s perspective, we’ve all become used to regular push notifications and news as it happens. But speed and quantity sometimes come at the expense of more-detailed work and checks.
And with real-time metrics, all commercial newsrooms are forced to balance public interest stories with those that inevitably get more clicks.
Some have criticised TVNZ and Newshub for not innovating sooner, and for sticking too keenly to an economic model which relies on linear TV advertising. This argument has some validity, although it’s hard to picture an innovative commercial video-based journalism model which could sustain as many New Zealand journalists in the Google-Meta-Netflix age.
And this is the crucial point. Regardless of what one thinks of any respective show, outlet, platform, or journalist, the hundreds of people set to lose their jobs at TVNZ and Newshub are not moving to different journalism jobs. It is not merely a like-for-like switch. Those jobs are just lost. Lost to the broadcasters, but also lost to journalism at large.
At a time when research suggests trust in news media is deteriorating, it’s hard to see how fewer journalists and outlets will reverse the trend.
I share the view of many others that any net reduction in the total number of journalists is damaging for democracy. Regardless of the medium, it means fewer people questioning power.
And while some dismiss journalism as just-another-industry (and one that is currently far too focused on itself), those of us who believe it fulfils a greater function are left pondering our depleted ranks and wondering, just how low will we go?
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