This post was originally written in November 2024.
WordPress was great until about a decade ago.
It was open source, which meant it could be free. It was simple and straightforward to use. It was customisable to the point where even non-technical users could build websites that didn’t look like WordPress sites.
WordPress’s stated philosophy was about democratising online publishing. Anyone could do it. You didn’t need skills or deep pockets. You could fire it up, get online and blog.
Unwelcome change
Then around a decade ago, the team behind WordPress began tinkering with it. It became bloated and complicated. It did what software companies often do: It added features that many users neither asked for or wanted.
This meant WordPress sites became cumbersome. There were ways of taming this process, but only up to a point.
WordPress site owners found they were being penalised by Google in search listings as their sites became slower. This was a warning of what was to come.
Gutenberg
Gutenberg was the first clear sign that WordPress was heading in the wrong direction.
For years WordPress was the best way to build a blog or a basic editorial web site.
It was straightforward. Although it needed some technical know-how, early WordPress was accessible. There was a great community of users willing to share information and help newcomers.
Online tutorials, user meetups and WordCamps filled in the gaps.
For a while it felt as if Wordpress really was democratising publishing.
The beauty of simplicity
You didn’t need programming skills to dig into early WordPress. But if you wanted to do more than the basics, there were easy-to-install plug-ins to add functionality.
Likewise there were many themes that let you change the look and feel of your site. Even non-developers could take things further by digging in to the CSS or tweaking lines of PHP code.
This simplicity meant it was easy to get information in and out of WordPress. In particular, I could take a blog post, find the underlying HTML code, then cut and paste it into another CMS for instant syndication.
Before and after Gutenberg
Gutenberg changed everything. Before Gutenberg you would write posts in an editor that resembled a text editor like IA Writer. Gutenberg replaced this with an editor that treats every element, text, images and so on, as a block.
Some people, maybe many people, find this approach more useful. It certainly works well for building more sophisticated sites, but this comes at the cost of making WordPress more complex.
It is harder to learn Gutenberg than the TinyMCE editor it replaces.
Page design
If pre-Gutenberg WordPress was like using a text editor, the current edition is more like Adobe’s InDesign. You need to take a training course to learn InDesign; mastery takes years.
Before Gutenberg, WordPress focused on creating great blog posts. Writers could concentrate on words and finding pictures to tell better stories.
Gutenberg is more concerned with layout, how things look on a web page. This can be distracting. It is an invitation to prevarication. There’s a risk it gets in the way of productivity. It certainly gets in the way of writing editorial.
Gutenberg’s gifts
Gutenberg is great for professional website builders. It gives them flexibility.
That extra layer of complexity that leaves casual WordPress users bewildered or in the cold means they can do more. It gives them ways to charge more and it creates a usability barrier which is, in itself, a commercial opportunity.
Professionals can use Gutenberg to design bigger, better sites with more features and functionality.
They can also sell custom blocks.
At the time it looked as if Wordpress was pushing Gutenberg in order to compete with companies like Wix and Squarespace which were proprietary alternatives for companies building commercially focused websites.
The newcomers were eating WordPress’s lunch in these key markets.
While the change may have made commercial sense, it sent WordPress further away from its roots as, essentially a blogging or editorial content management system.
It was no longer about publishing.
WordPress.com
About the same time WordPress.com, the commercial, hosted version of the software found more and more ways of charging users. Running a WordPress.com site went from pocket money pricing to we-could-take-the-entire-family-out-for-dinner pricing. To be fair this would depend on which options you chose to buy.
WordPress also dragged out the huge, sprawling Jetpack plug-in which was a way of getting people with open source, self-hosted Wordpress sites to pay subscriptions. A handful of important features were wrapped into Jetpack making the subscription essentially compulsory for any but the most casual, disengaged user.
This was the second sign that Wordpress was no longer the idealist democratic publishing service it once was. It was clear it was out to maximise income.
It’s hard to complain about that. We live in a commercial world. But we don’t have to like it or accept it.
I didn’t sign up for a full CMS
I didn’t want an all-singing, all-dancing content management system. For a few years I tinkered with WordPress themes and plug-ins that stripped the complexity, bloat and sluggishness from the software. Until I realised this was a losing battle.
My first website was a hand-coded, flat affair written in HTML and CSS with no database. I considered returning to this, although with 1500 posts that was a daunting prospect.
Since then I settled for Ghost and Micro.blog. The two options offer different approaches, different features. Ghost is clearly aimed at journalists, bloggers and online publishers. It is closer to the Wordpress goal of democratising publishing. Micro.blog can be used that way, but it also functions as an alternative to social media.
I didn’t see the recent WordPress controversy coming a decade ago, but by three years ago when I switched away from WordPress it was clear something like this was on the way.
As it says earlier in this post, I didn’t leave WordPress, WordPress left me.
Originally published May 2020. The challenge of sustaining local technology journalism in New Zealand has only intensified since then, with further media consolidation and newsroom cuts.
The story didn’t get a run in any reputable New Zealand media.
Contrast this with the extensive coverage Microsoft got the following day when it announced it was opening a New Zealand cloud region.
The Microsoft story was everywhere. It popped up at Stuff, RNZ and Reseller News among others. There were overseas runs at TechCrunch, CRN and Computerworld. The Stuff version was almost straight PR copy.
The prime minister even talked about it on TV.
Big run
The point here isn’t about New Zealand media giving the overseas company a bigger run than the local company. Although that could be a story in its own right – see Comparing the stories below.
What the contrast between two stories show is how much damage the lack of local technology news coverage does to New Zealand’s home grown technology sector.
No-one here has the resources to file a story that is, by local standards, somewhat significant.
No one is watching, does anyone care?
We no longer have a native technology press. It’s a situation which, presumably, will be worse if Stuff no longer operates as a separate entity. 2026 update: thankfully this did not happen.
The vacuum means local technology companies struggle to build awareness through traditional media channels.
Last month Bauer Media closed its New Zealand operation shutting off Peter Griffin’s excellent regular features in the Listener. The Listener has since been sold and continues publishing.
This web site is also sporadic. At the time of writing, my stories here are posted between paying journalism jobs. That means they can’t always be timely.
Filling the vacuum are many overseas sites. Whatever their merits, they are not going to zoom in on the activities of a local cloud provider.
Comparing the stories
There’s no question the arrival of a New Zealand Microsoft cloud region is the bigger news story. Microsoft is the world’s second largest cloud operator. It has many customers here and there is a pent-up demand for a world-scale cloud operator to open shop in New Zealand.
In contrast, the Catalyst story, is not much more than a feature update.
There are interesting angles to the Catalyst story. The cost of its Object Storage is on a par with costs for world scale cloud operators. It costs three cents a month to store a gigabyte.
The ‘everything stored in New Zealand’ angle is important. But it’s also an important part of Microsoft’s story. And, no doubt, Microsoft could make the same claim about only using renewable energy.
Uphill battle for local technology news
What this illustrates is a company like Catalyst struggles to be heard above the noise.
It must be galling for people at Catalyst and other New Zealand technology companies. They something innovative like introducing low cost cloud storage only to wake the following day and see a rival’s news splashed around the place.
Longer term it is a worry. Wikipedia says:
“If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?” is a philosophical thought experiment that raises questions regarding observation and perception.
Tech companies need that observation and perception. New Zealand’s tech sector no longer has either.
This isn’t just bad for technology companies—it’s bad for New Zealand. Without local technology journalism, we lose accountability, context and the ability to understand how technology shapes our economy and society. The companies doing innovative work deserve to have their stories told,and New Zealand readers deserve to hear them.
**More on journalism and media: **
This post is part of ongoing coverage about journalism business models, digital adaptation and modern reporting:
Originally written December 2010, updated September 2025, with additional context added January 2026.
In Costly Mistakes for the American Journalism Review, former newspaper reporter turned industry analyst John Morton argues that many of the steps US publishers took to counter falling advertising revenues in the run-up to the recession only made things worse. His analysis is sharp and remains a must-read for anyone following the newspaper industry.
High margins, short horizons
Morton points out that corporate publishers demanded margins of 20 percent or more from their papers. This was unsustainable. The pursuit of these returns meant cutting the very things that made newspapers valuable—experienced staff, institutional knowledge, deep local coverage.
Family-owned papers had traditionally worked on closer to 10 percent margins, still a healthy return that brought owners influence and prestige along with profit. Owning a paper was lucrative, but the greater rewards were power and status.
Corporations, however, chased higher returns. To keep margins fat, they cut investment and hollowed out editorial quality. By the time the internet arrived, publishers assumed they could leverage their media assets into digital businesses and keep the money flowing.
While huge numbers of readers visited newspaper websites, few stayed long or read deeply. Publishers struggled to understand that digital and print required different approaches, not just digital versions of print strategies.
Writing for Nieman Journalism Lab, Martin Langeveld said publishers needed to grow their online market share rather than erecting barriers. He argued that paywalls and fights with aggregators risked driving audiences away, further shrinking relevance.
Paying for loyalty
Paywalls may strengthen ties with a small core of loyal readers, but at the cost of scale. The risk is that newspapers swap mass reach for narrow influence, losing their role as central public forums.
The industry’s obsession with margins in print and its missteps online meant publishers missed opportunities to adapt. By prioritising short-term profit over long-term sustainability, newspapers undermined both their business model and their place in society.
What could have worked differently
Looking back from 2026, some alternative paths become clear:
Build reader relationships early: Publishers who invested in email newsletters, membership models and direct reader engagement in the early 2000s—before social media dominated—built sustainable audiences. Those who learned to use journalism tools to build communities fared better than those who treated websites as digital print editions.
Preserve institutional knowledge: Cutting newspaper librarians and experienced staff seemed like smart cost-cutting. It proved disastrous. New reporters couldn’t learn from veterans and investigative capacity evaporated.
Avoid the subscription trap alone:Subscription models worked for elite publications but created a second digital divide. A mix of approaches—freemium, micropayments, memberships—might have served democracy better.
None of these guaranteed survival, but they offered better odds than chasing unsustainable margins while hollowing out the product.
The loss of control wasn’t just about business model failures. As newspapers struggled, tech platforms like Google and Facebook became the primary distributors of news, treating journalism as content to drive engagement rather than as a public service.
This shift fundamentally changed who controls what news people see and how they see it. Meanwhile, local journalism withered in many markets, and ad-blocking further undermined remaining revenue streams.
More on journalism and media:This post is part of ongoing coverage about journalism business models, industry decline and missed opportunities:
Originally published July 2018. Updated January 2026 with observations on how subscription fatigue and a proliferation of paid services have reshaped the economics of paying for content.
The subscription explosion
When this post was first written in 2018, the subscription economy was already growing. By 2026, it has exploded—and the problem of limited consumer budgets has only intensified.
The average person now juggles subscriptions to streaming services (Netflix, Disney+, Apple TV+), music services (Spotify, Apple Music), cloud storage (iCloud, Google Drive, Dropbox), productivity tools (Microsoft 365, Adobe) and increasingly, news and journalism services (Substack, Patreon, individual publication subscriptions).
The core insight from 2018 remains true: people allocate a fixed budget to subscriptions, creating fierce competition among publishers, app makers and content creators.
Ben Brooks gets close to the heart of the problem with pay walls when he writes Subscription Hell. It’s hard to make money from pay walls.
The few online sites that do well from pay walls are those like New Zealand’s National Business Review or The Economist. Both serve well-heeled audiences with unique, quality content readers can’t get elsewhere.
Brooks makes two interesting points.
First, differentiation. Brooks is thinking about podcasting, but it applies to all online media. In essence he says there are thousands of undifferentiated podcasts chasing the same audience.
…but will they pay?
The implication is that no-one will pay to listen to one of the podcasts when there are dozens of free alternatives. You could say the same about most online media. This, in part, does not apply to pay wall successes like the NBR and The Economist.
Their audiences don’t have obvious alternatives.
The other point is subtle. Brooks makes the connection between people paying for apps and buying pay wall subscriptions.
On the surface these are two quite distinct markets. And yet, recently I was thinking about exactly this concept from the opposite point of view. I have a number of subscriptions to pay each month. Some are for apps or online services. Others are for, it’s a horrible word to use, but let’s go with it: content.
Pay wall, subscription software: two aspects of the same thing
When budgeting, the two are aspects of the same thing. I allow myself so many dollars a month for subscriptions. It’s a single pool of money to cover digital services like cloud storage, online music, movie downloads, pay walls and apps. What isn’t spent on apps is available for media. What isn’t spent on media can be spent on apps.
A decade ago the budget was zero. By 2018 it had grown. While it still wasn’t a huge amount of money, it was about the same as I spent on coffee. In 2026 it is well past that level. I don’t plan to let it grow higher.
I’m not alone. Two decades ago, in the mid-2000s, the budget for digital subscriptions was essentially zero for most people. By 2018 it had grown to a modest amount. By 2026, the typical household subscription spending has ballooned—one estimate suggests US households now spend over $200 monthly on subscriptions, with many unaware how much they’re actually paying.
The issue is, consciously or not, people only budget so much money for subscriptions. We have a limited pool of funds. So does everyone else. The world has a limited pool of funds for subscriptions.
On a world scale it is huge and the pool is still growing. Even so, there is not enough to go around for everyone who would like to earn money selling pay wall subscriptions or apps.
Too many sellers, too few buyers.
And there’s the problem. It’s not hopeless. Micropayment services and reader-supported platforms have evolved since 2018. Substack, Patreon, Ko-fi and Buy Me a Coffee offer ways for readers to directly support creators. I use New Zealand-based Press Patron and can recommend it.
Some publications experiment with bundled subscriptions or tiered pricing to capture different budget levels. But fundamentally, the challenge remains: too many sellers competing for limited buyer budgets. The newspapers that missed their opportunities to build early subscription habits now face even fiercer competition than they did in 2018.
Yet it’s difficult. The market for content pay walls or subscription software is not infinite.
Subscription fatigue sets in
In 2026, we’re seeing subscription fatigue. People are overwhelmed by the number of recurring charges hitting their accounts. Many have begun rotating subscriptions—subscribing for a month, binge-watching or reading, then canceling until they need it again.
This presents new challenges for publishers and creators who need predictable recurring revenue. The answer isn’t obvious, but journalists who use their core skills to build genuine communities tend to retain subscribers better than those treating it purely as a transaction.
More on journalism and media:This post is part of ongoing coverage about journalism business models, digital adaptation and the subscription economy:
Originally published March 2017. The core argument about journalism serving readers rather than industry remains as relevant today, even as the business model challenges have intensified.
At The Register Shaun Nichols writes:
“The tech press has dared to lean away from its core mission of making technology companies more profitable, says tech advocacy house ITIF.”
Long story short, it says the media moved from a positive attitude towards the industry to confrontation.
This, according to the ITIF, is because being tough on the industry makes it easier for tech media to turn a profit.
It goes on to talk about the media being ‘biased’ and distorts the public view of technology.
Yes, it’s all stuff and nonsense. There’s a lot to unpack, but here are a couple of ideas to think about.
Advertising
In the past publishers made money selling advertising to technology companies. They were a great sales conduit. It worked.
The technology industry was the tech media’s most important customer. Rivers of gold poured in.
While there are publishers who publish nice stories in return for advertising dollars, that was never a great business model. Reader are not fooled. They don’t stick around for blatant propaganda.
The advertising money didn’t buy favourable coverage, at least in the better publications. It did foster a favourable attitude towards the industry. The coverage reflected this.
The partnership also meant journalists and publishers spent time in the company of tech industry people. That too is good for creating a positive attitude.
One conclusion of the ITIF report is more advertising would repair media relations.
Readers and journalists
In the old model, advertisers paid for journalism, but journalists serve readers. Few understood this then. They still don’t.
As Nichols says, we’re not industry cheerleaders. We don’t earn cheerleader, public relations or marketing-type salaries.
Our job is to inform readers. If there is more cynicism in technology media (see the next point) then that is what readers want.
Modern reporting tools mean we know what stories rate from the minute they go online. Guess what? Readers are less likely to click on happy-slappy, isn’t everything wonderful darling stories.
In other words, journalists and publishers respond to reader demands.
Don’t shoot the messenger if they now have a darker view of the tech industry. Get your own house in order.
It’s all nonsense anyway
To argue tech media is meaner than it ways, say, thirty years ago is bonkers. The big newspapers and media sites are full of thin press release rewrites. It is common for blatant propaganda to appear as factual news. This is the opposite of what old-school journalism fundamentals taught us.
Take, for the sake of argument, Computerworld New Zealand. Thirty years ago, even a decade ago, it was breaking news stories. It was quoted in Parliament. Today, it runs nothing that didn’t start life in a public relations office.
That’s not to say all the tech media is soft. It isn’t. But the ratio of soft stories to more hard hitting news is off the scale. You have to wonder if the ITIF is paying attention.
More on journalism and media:This post is part of ongoing coverage about journalism business models, digital adaptation and modern reporting:
Originally published September 2008. At the time online media was expected to replace newspapers but not necessarily do the full job. Updated January 2026 after eighteen years when the story proved correct: online left a gaping hole.
The prediction: Online would leave a gap
In 2008, an article in the Australian newspaper: The winter of journalism’s content argued that online publishing, which was widely expected to supplant newspapers and magazines, would only go so far in replacing them and leave a gaping hole.
This worried me then. It should worry us more now.
When advertisers abandoned print media
The 2008 argument was straightforward: Advertisers were abandoning print media for online, attracted by cost-effectiveness and perceived targetability.
Yet those online advertisers preferred placing messages next to “niche interest stories”—car ads next to driving features, travel ads next to vacation content—not next to investigations of government corruption or corporate malfeasance.
Even if publishers could fund hard news, advertisers wouldn’t want it. The perverse incentive was clear: publish less accountability journalism, more marketable fluff.
However, traditionally it was those difficult, hard news stories sold printed newspapers and dragged in readers in the first place. The hard news delivered readers to the publication where they could consume the advertising.
Eighteen years later: The gap is real
By 2026, the forecast proved accurate—though not uniformly. The landscape fragmented:
**Where investigative journalism survived:
**
Elite national outlets: The New York Times and Guardian continue to invest in investigations, funded by digital subscriptions. They hire investigative teams and break major stories.
In January 2026, this list originally included the Washington Post, but that’s now questionable following recent cuts and that move illustrates the continuing vulnerability of traditional hard journalism.
Nonprofit models:ProPublica, founded in 2007, proved investigations could be foundation-funded. Local nonprofit newsrooms emerged in dozens of US cities.
We don’t see anything comparable in New Zealand where the pool of available money is not big enough to sustain even a nonprofit publication.
Specialist outlets: Sites focusing on specific niches (healthcare, environment, national security) found niche audiences willing to pay.
Where it died:
Local newspapers: The papers that held city councils, school boards and local businesses accountable have largely disappeared. Local journalism collapsed, and with it, local accountability.
Regional coverage: Mid-sized papers that once investigated identifiable regions in countries like New Zealand or the UH, US state governments, large corporations and regional issues cut investigative teams first when ad revenue collapsed.
**Specialist niches: **Coverage of courts, local government, education and civic institutions evaporated in many markets.
The gap wasn’t filled—it was papered over with press releases, wire service copy and user-generated content.
The economics that did the damage
The 2008 prediction about advertising economics proved devastatingly accurate:
Print advertising collapsed: Between 2008 and 2026, newspaper print advertising revenue fell by approximately 90 percent. Digital advertising revenue grew, but never came close to replacing what was lost.
**Online advertising favours fluff: **The algorithm-driven ad market rewards engagement and scale, not importance. Publishers learned that listicles, celebrity news and viral content generated far more ad revenue per dollar invested than months-long investigations.
The “adjacent ad” problem persisted: Advertisers still don’t want their brands next to stories about corruption, crime or corporate wrongdoing. This “brand safety” concern systematically draws money away from accountability journalism.
Investigative teams spending months on complex stories
Court reporters attending every trial
Government reporters tracking legislation - there is still some coverage, but reduced and shallower than in the past
Local government watchdogs at every city council meeting
The volume of online content exploded. The volume of accountability journalism contracted.
Alternative models that emerged
The gap wasn’t filled, but some models showed promise:
**1. Nonprofit newsrooms:
**
In the US, ProPublica, The Texas Tribune, Voice of San Diego and dozens of others proved foundation funding could sustain investigations. But this model:
Relies on philanthropic priorities (not public priorities)
Doesn’t scale to every community. There is no equivalent in New Zealand
Creates dependence on wealthy funders
2. Membership models:
Sites like The Guardian’s voluntary contributions and De Correspondent’s member-funded journalism showed readers would support quality work. But subscription fatigue limited how many outlets could pursue this. The Guardian’s needy begging is so tiresome it turns readers off what could be a useful site.
3. Hybrid models:
Public radio expanded into digital, combining listener support, foundation grants and some advertising. Both the UK’s BBC and New Zealand’s RNZ run credible online news operations. In the US, universities launched investigative centres. Some success, but not comprehensive and nothing of the sort in New Zealand.
4. Individual journalist brands:
Substack, Ghost and similar online services, let individual reporters build subscriber bases. Independent journalists broke stories—but without institutional support for legal, research and editing. In New Zealand Bernard Hickey maintains a lively news focused site with a model that sees his most important stories made available to non subscribers.
But despite all these efforts, none replaced the comprehensive accountability coverage newspapers once provided.
The democratic deficit
Here’s what society lost:
Local corruption or incompetence goes uncovered: Without reporters at city council meetings, local officials face less scrutiny. Small-scale corruption and poor governance that affects citizens' daily lives—zoning decisions, contract awards, police conduct—happens in darkness.
Corporate power unchecked: Complex investigations of corporate behaviour—wage theft, environmental violations, financial fraud—require resources few outlets can deploy. Companies know this and act accordingly. Also there is an asymmetry when it comes to access to the law, news organisations can rarely afford to defend litigation even when they are clearly in the right.
Government opacity increases: Without specialist reporters who know the territory, government press releases become “news.” Official narratives face less challenge. One phrase that comes up whenever officials are questioned on such statements is “just use the press release”.
Civic knowledge declines: Citizens can’t effectively participate in democracy if they don’t know what’s happening in their communities. The information divide became a democratic participation divide.
As foreseen in 2008: “this vicious economic cycle is nothing compared to what can happen in a society that no longer has a practical mechanism for scrutinising governments and out-of-control corporations.”
By 2026, many communities have no such mechanism.
Could it have been different?
Looking back, newspapers missed opportunities. Some alternative paths:
Earlier investment in reader relationships: Publishers who built direct subscriber relationships in the early 2000s—before social media dominated—preserved more of their audience and funding for accountability work.
Collaborative models: Had newspapers pooled resources for investigations rather than competing, they might have maintained more capacity. Some collaborations have emerged, but too late.
Public funding: Other democracies subsidise journalism more directly. The US and New Zealand largely didn’t. Whether that would have worked remains debatable, but private markets clearly failed to fund adequate accountability journalism.
Different priorities: Publishers chasing unsustainable profit margins cut investigations first. Had they prioritised accountability over quarterly returns, things could have been different.
None of these guaranteed success. But what actually happened—allowing market forces alone to determine what journalism survives—left democracy worse off.
The 2026 reality
The 2008 blog post was on the money: online media didn’t fill the gap newspapers left.
We have more content than ever. We have less accountability journalism than we need.
We have viral videos and hot takes. We have fewer reporters at government meetings.
We have elite national outlets continuing to do good work. We have local information deserts.
The gaping hole remains. It’s affecting how democracy functions. Eighteen years proved the concern valid. The question now is whether we’ll do anything about it.
There’s not much scope for optimism.
**More on journalism and media:
**
This post is part of ongoing coverage about journalism business models, democratic accountability and the information gap:
Originally published November 2019, when subscription paywalls were becoming widespread. Updated January 2026 after the predicted divide became reality.
Seven years later: The divide deepened
The 2019 warning proved accurate—and then some. By 2026, the subscription divide has become entrenched:
The information haves: Subscribe to multiple news sources (NYT, local papers, specialist publications), access quality analysis, fact-checked reporting and investigative journalism. They understand complex issues through expert coverage.
The information have-nots: Rely on free sources—social media, ad-supported clickbait and increasingly, misinformation and propaganda. Quality journalism sits behind paywalls they can’t afford, especially when subscription fatigue means even middle-class readers pick only one or two news subscriptions.
The result: Knowledge gaps correlate with wealth. Those who can afford comprehensive news coverage make better-informed decisions about health, finance, politics and daily life. Those who can’t are more vulnerable to manipulation.
Google and Facebook control almost all the world’s online advertising revenue. To get around this, news organisations and other online media use paywalls and subscriptions.
It makes perfect sense when there’s precious little advertising revenue to pay wages and other bills. Producing media costs money. Publishers learned that calling them subscriptions rather than paywalls helped, but the fundamental problem remained.
He writes: “The digital divide is about to get worse with the rise of subscription-based news media because of the failure of advertising to provide revenues for a sustainable business model.”
It’s another reason to not like Facebook. Another reason to fear Google.
Newspapers are not the only examples. Subscriptions, not advertising, pays for Video and sports streaming services. Pay-per-view is not new, but there is now more of it.
Here in New Zealand, the National Business Review hides all stories behind a paywall. The NZHerald keeps its best stories for paying subscribers. They are not alone.
A second digital divide
As an upshot, low income people who manage to jump the first digital divide and get online, come up against a second divide. Subscription costs often shut them out from the best online content.
By 2026, the economics became stark: A comprehensive news diet requires multiple subscriptions.
Local news ($10-15 a month), national coverage ($15-20 a month), specialist reporting ($10-20 a month), international news ($15-25 a month). That’s $50-80 monthly just for news—competing with Netflix, Spotify and essential software subscriptions.
Free media has stepped in to fill the gap left by newspapers. Some free sites are good. RNZ runs an excellent free news site.
Some free media is darker. People with a hidden agenda and money to spend can publish plausible looking news. Although plausibility isn’t essential here. Manipulators have free run to bombard readers with lies and misleading information.
Propaganda
Look up an international story on Google News. You’ll find links to certain sites that are openly or not so openly propaganda sites. There are Russian and Chinese examples. In some cases intelligence agencies pay the bills.
Other free news services might push extremist ideologies or misinformation. Lies are common. By 2026, AI-generated content made this worse—plausible-looking “news” sites pumping out convincing misinformation at scale, all free to access.
People who buy subscriptions end up better informed. They can make better choices. They may even live better, healthier, even happier lives than the poor souls on the wrong side of the second digital divide.
Meanwhile, local journalism collapsed in many areas. Communities without affordable local news sources became information deserts, filled by partisan blogs, social media rumours and national outlets that couldn’t cover local issues adequately.
Democracy requires informed citizens
This creates a genuine crisis for democratic societies. Informed citizenship requires access to quality information. When that access depends on wealth, democracy suffers.
Some publishers recognised this. The Guardian built a voluntary contribution model—free to read, supported by those who can pay. Some local papers offered low-income subscription rates. Major investigations often appeared outside paywalls as a public service.
But these were exceptions. Most publishers, struggling to survive, had no choice but to maximize subscription revenue. The business model challenge that drove publications toward subscriptions created unintended social consequences.
**The alternatives weren’t better: **Ad-supported models had failed, surveillance capitalism exploited readers, and direct government funding of journalism raised its own concerns. There were no easy answers.
**More on journalism and media:
**
This post is part of ongoing coverage about journalism business models, access to information and the subscription economy:
Originally published September 2020. Updated January 2026 as subscription fatigue has reached crisis levels and spending continues to climb.
Six years later: Subscription overload is real
The 2020 warning about subscription spending spiralling out of control proved prophetic. By 2026, the average household’s digital subscription spending has ballooned even further:
More services: In 2020, Disney+ was new. By 2026, add Paramount+, multiple sports streaming services, Substack newsletters, podcast subscriptions and countless niche platforms. The streaming wars fragmented content across more services than ever.
Higher prices: Individual subscription prices crept up well in advance of inflation. Netflix, Disney+ and others have raised prices multiple times. What seemed like “$10 per month” bargains in 2020 are now $15-20+ per service.
News subscriptions multiplied:Publishers embraced paywalls aggressively. Reading multiple news sources now requires juggling multiple subscriptions, creating a second digital divide between information haves and have-nots.
The fundamental problem from 2020—people can’t track what they’re spending—has only worsened as services multiply and compete for limited consumer budgets.
Where does the money go?
We spend a lot on digital subscriptions. Far more than people think.
You can buy streamed television entertainment, sports coverage and music. When these options bore you, there are services that deliver computer games over the net.
Newspapers and magazine publishers now sell digital subscriptions. Many learned that framing matters—language makes a difference to conversion rates.
Then there are online storage services. These includes those that specialise in looking after your photographs.
You can pay monthly for small business accounting, for security or productivity applications. Xero, Microsoft Office or Adobe Photoshop are popular examples.
Little and often
Subscriptions tend to be monthly or annual. Although there are those who charge for three or six months at a time.
Each monthly payment might be small in itself. But they soon add up to a hefty recurring commitment.
Estimates of how much people spend depend on what you include. Should you, say, include your mobile phone and broadband bills when you tot up your total spend?
Few people can tell you how much they spend on subscriptions. A US consulting firm asked Americans to guess their monthly spend: They underestimated by a huge margin. The average spend was three times people’s first guess.
It would not be that different if you asked New Zealanders.
When ignorance is not bliss
Not knowing your spend should be a wake up call. It would make a budgeting expert flinch. When you’ve no idea how much money is dribbling away, it’s hard to make rational spending decisions.
The amount people spend on subscriptions climbs each year. In part that’s because there’s more to buy. A year ago Netflix, Neon, Lightbox and Amazon Prime were the main New Zealand streaming video options. This year Disney joined the party. And there is a revamped Apple TV along with a fleet of niche alternatives.
Another reason spending climbs is we connect more and more devices to the Internet. One way or another these devices need feeding.
Weird subscription economics
There’s a lot of weird economics in digital services. On one level it all makes sense. On another it might not.
The price of individual digital services is usually low. When software companies switched to selling online subscriptions, it looked like a bargain.
Lower headline prices seduced customers. Take Microsoft Office. The annual NZ$120 subscription looks a bargain compared with five times as much for a packaged version. Knowing that you’d always be up-to-date and compatible with others helps ease fears about long-term costs.
Software purchased the traditional way can go on working for years. There are people with ten-year-old versions of Word. If you keep software that long, subscriptions are expensive compared with buying outright.
Software updates
After all, it’s not as if, say, Microsoft Word has changed much in ten years. This goes for a lot of subscription software.
Xero is newer than Word. There is no pre-subscription era to look back at.
In the early years, Xero developed fast. It grew up with its customers.
As far as what ordinary customers see, the product is now stable. There may be updates, but its core functionality for small business owners has not budged in a while.
Sometimes the upgrades to subscription software are the digital equivalent of a lick of paint and a rub down. Things look new and fresh, but nothing important has changed.
Renting music
Music subscriptions obey a different set of economic rules. Many fans have hundreds, even thousands of dollars invested in vinyl, CDs and digital downloads.
My non-streaming digital music collection has more than 40 days of listening material. That’s 40 times 24 hours. I can go the best part of a year without hearing the same track twice.
Paying NZ$20 a month on top of this, when a lot of what is served up is sitting on my computer, doesn’t make sense. In effect, people in this position are paying an algorithm to find new songs. Which is great if you thirst for new songs. Otherwise, it’s an indulgence.
News subscriptions: A special case
Journalism subscriptions present unique challenges. Unlike entertainment, where you might subscribe to watch specific shows, news is continuous and urgent. Missing a key story because it’s behind a paywall you don’t subscribe to creates real information gaps.
Publishers learned that calling them “subscriptions” rather than “paywalls” helps, but it doesn’t solve the core problem: comprehensive news coverage requires multiple subscriptions. Local news, national news, international coverage, specialist business reporting—each potentially sits behind a different paywall.
This puts news in competition with entertainment. When budgets are limited, Netflix often wins over newspaper subscriptions. Publishers hoped quality journalism would be valued enough to compete. For some audiences it is; for many it isn’t.
The result? Fewer people paying for news even as journalism costs haven’t fallen. The subscription model works for elite publications serving affluent audiences. Everyone else struggles.
Tracking your subscription spend
As we’ve seen, one worrying aspect of digital subscriptions is that it is hard to keep track of them all.
It is even harder to know if you get value from each of the services in your portfolio.
Take, my Amazon Prime subscription. It is ‘free’ (that’s free as in marketing language, not free as a in free beer) as part of my broadband plan. In the last year we may have watched five or six hours of Prime material. If we paid for the subscription, the cost per show would be prohibitive.
It’s clear this would not be a good service to purchase when the broadband ‘free’ offer expires.
Not knowing is part of the business model
The point earlier about people not knowing how much they spend on subscriptions is more than an anecdote.
Allowing people to forget about subscriptions but carry on paying the small monthly fee is part of the business model. It’s like gyms. They collect a sizeable slice of their revenue from people who rarely show up to use the equipment. Publishers adopted similar models, hoping readers would forget to cancel after reading specific stories.
One reason people sign up for a streaming service is to watch an original series or two. Think of those who joined to watch Game of Thrones.
The service providers know that once customers have sucked dry the handful of programmes they signed for, their subscription can tick over for months before they realise they are no longer getting value.
Audit your subscription spending
It’s a good idea to audit your spending on digital services. There’s a chance there will be at least one active subscription that you don’t get value from. There will be annual and monthly payments, perhaps others.
One nasty trap many fall into is the free trial period. Often you are asked for credit card details when you sign on. It may take a few cycles before you realise what happened. This is extra hard when the trial is for an additional service from a provider you already buy something else from as the charge can be buried with something else in your bank statements.
Work through your card or bank statements. You’ll need to look at the last 12 months to capture all annual subscriptions. If you can, pull the data into a spreadsheet and count up the subscription total. Look for double-ups and services that seemed like a good idea at the time, but are no longer used. Cancel the repayments now. You’ll forget later.
Watch for extras. These can be hidden. Streaming services may charge more for 4K content or for not including advertising. You may pay for more cloud storage than you need or for options that don’t get used.
If this all sounds confusing, and it is, remind yourself this is not an accident. Keeping you confused about subscriptions is worth billions to service providers.
Vast sums are at stake when millions of customers forget to cancel at the end of popular series. This business model fundamentally shapes how digital media operates—subscriptions replaced advertising, but brought their own problems.
More on journalism and media:
_This post is part of ongoing coverage about journalism business models, subscription economics and sustainable publishing:
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Originally published November 2014. Updated January 2026 with a decade of further decline, consolidation and the rise of independent journalism sites.
A decade on there are even fewer voices
When this was first written in 2014, New Zealand technology journalism was in its “twilight years.” By 2026, it would be generous to call it even that. The situation has deteriorated further:
IDG’s titles: Computerworld NZ and **Reseller News **are now run from Australia. There is local input, Reseller News has a New Zealand editor, but both titles include much Australian content. TechDay continues but with reduced scope and it is still primarily a marketing operation, not journalism in the sense we grew up with.
Many of the journalists named in 2014 have moved on to other roles or overseas publications. The mainstream newspapers have cut back even further.
What technology coverage exists is often outsourced, aggregated or, in the worst cases, AI-generated filler.
There is bright spot with independent journalists using platforms like Substack, Ghost and personal websites to partially fill the void. But these voices serve niche audiences rather than providing the broad industry coverage New Zealand once had. And none of them other than this site are technology focused.
You can count the number of full-time technology journalists writing for New Zealand audiences on your fingers. Experienced local journalists are as likely to turn up on overseas publications as on local titles.
Readers are more familiar with international technology media; even if it doesn’t always serve our needs.
It means we no longer tell the best stories about local technology companies. We don’t report the ways New Zealanders deal with technology. A lot gets missed.
We’ve stopped telling our stories because no-one wants to pay for that kind of writing.
Specialist tech publishers
Three specialist publishers dominate:
Techday publishes two monthly print magazines: IT Brief and The Channel. It operates as an umbrella website featuring eight virtual publication brands covering subject niches.
Techday lists three staff journalists are listed on its website. The last time I asked none of them worked full-time. This may have changed. Update: Techday Publisher Sean Mitchell tells me his journalists are all employed full-time.
IDG is US-owned and Australian managed. It publishes a print edition of CIO magazine three times a year. If you want a subscription you have to apply to Australia. That speaks volumes. IDG also operates Computerworld, NZ Reseller News and PC World as online-only publications.
IDG employs two full-time journalists. James Henderson is the editor of Computerworld NZ while Divina Paredes is CIO editor. Randal Jackson writes stories as the group’s Wellington-based freelance. Reseller News and PC World don’t have local editorial staff. Update: James Henderson is the editor of both Computerworld NZ and Reseller News.
**iStart **publishes a print and electronic magazine three times a year. The business is Auckland based with New Zealand and Australian print editions and websites. Auckland-based Clare Coulson is the editor.
Part-time technology journalism
Between them the three specialist publishers employ three full-time and four part-time journalists. Update: six full-time and one part-time. That’s still fewer than one journalist per masthead. They rarely break hard news stories. News pages are mostly filled with rewritten press releases and PR-fed material.
That sounds like criticism. On one level it is, but it also reflects commercial reality. There’s little advertising revenue, and ad-blocking has made the situation worse. What advertisers the publishers can scrape up are looking for a shortcut to sales leads, not hard-hitting exposés.
You will find longer features in most titles. Sometimes there’s even analysis although there’s little of the deeper material that characterised the technology press in the past.
Again that’s commercial reality: journalists are under pressure to pump out a lot of content fast. There’s not much time for reflection.
This also explains why the IDG sites are full of overseas filler material. It keeps the pipeline full at no extra cost to the publisher. The stories seem to be picked at random. No thought is given to whether a story serves readers.
This can get extreme. Last week Ian Apperley noted there wasn’t a single local story among the 100 most recent news items on the Computerworld NZ feed.
Technology journalism in mainstream media
The same pressure to pump out volume applies to tech journalists working in New Zealand’s mainstream media. Both Stuff and the NZ Herald fill their online pipelines with low-cost, low-value overseas filler material.
In the past the newspapers did great work keeping industry insiders, users and the public informed about events and trends. Now they publish shorter, less analytical news although there are some notable exceptions, particularly when covering telecommunications.
One reason you don’t see as much local technology news is there are no longer any full-time technology journalists working on mainstream newspapers and magazines.
Chris Keall who at one time edited NZ PC World is the most notable specialist journalist in terms of output. He is NBR technology editor. Keall is also the paper’s head of digital, so he spends less time at the tech coal face. Keall manages to write roughly a story a day and at times gets behind more complex issues.
At the Dominion Post Tom Pullar-Strecker was a technology specialist but now has a general business journalism role. Being based in Wellington he sometimes gets insight into issues such as telecommunications policy. These days he writes roughly one tech story a week.
NZ Herald
The NZ Herald gives technology assignments to a number of journalists. The best know is Chris Barton, who writes features and commentary covering technology and telecommunications topics. Barton goes deep, but his work only appears occasionally.
The Herald also runs a weekly blog by tech veteran Juha Saarinen. Saarinen is one of the locally based technology journalists who appears to earn most of his income from working for overseas publishers. Unlike most of us, he has a firmer technology background. He mainly writes for IT News, an Australian online publication.
Rob O’Neill is another virtual ex-pat New Zealand journalist. He writes for ZDNet and is listed as part of the ZDNet Australia team. O’Neill writes local and international stories, maybe two local items a week.
Wellington-based Owen Williams has only recently moved to working full-time as a journalist. He is now on the team for US-based The Next Web.
On a personal note
This round-up wouldn’t be complete without mentioning my work.
I’m a freelance journalist. I write a regular technology column for NZ Business magazine — it mainly appears in print. In the last year have also written features for iStart, NBR and for Management magazine, which is now part of NZ Business. I also turn up on TV3 Firstline and the NZ Tech Podcast talking about technology.
My highest profile freelance work would be on the business feature pull-outs that appear in the NZ Herald about ten times a year. Although I get to write about tech from a business point of view, the stories range across most business areas.
There are also overseas jobs. In the last year I have written for ZDNet’s PC Magazine and for Computer Weekly out of the UK. Both publishers commissioned stories that are specifically about New Zealand themes.
Local technology journalism is undergunned
Most experienced New Zealand technology writers, myself included, are not writing full-time for New Zealand audiences about local themes. Some are writing for overseas publishers, others split writing duties with other editorial responsibilities.
Those who are writing full-time spend their lives in a haze churning out short items dictated largely by the flow of press releases and PR-initiated pitches.
Too often an exclusive is nothing more than first dibs on a press release. You’re not doing your job when you post 20 smartphone shots of someone’s new data centre or are the first New Zealand site to publish alleged leaked photos of a yet to be launched product.
Getting eyeballs is everything. Local publishers fight with Google over the slim pickings available from online advertisements. They also compete internationally. New Zealanders probably read more overseas written tech news than locally written stories.
I’m not judgemental about the problems they face or the way local publishers tackle the problems, I’m on the receiving end of the same economic forces.
I’m not judgemental about the problems they face or the way local publishers tackle the problems, I’m on the receiving end of the same economic forces. The subscription economy hasn’t solved the problem and paywalls remain controversial.
Who pays the piper?
The market doesn’t serve the readers. It doesn’t serve the local tech industry. Leaders of New Zealand tech companies need to be aware of what is going on in their industry, not what someone’s promotional output says. They need intelligence, not propaganda.
The current approach doesn’t serve the public good.
There’s also a problem when a big news story breaks that has technology woven into its fabric. Remember the fuss in the run-up to the 2014 election over stolen emails? Perhaps the planned $1.5 billion reboot of the IRD computer system. How about the business of the Edward Snowden leaks?
In some cases journalists who don’t have tech expertise or the contacts needed to make sense of what is happening are sent to deal with these stories.
That’s a pity. There’s a bigger pity. Hundreds of real, hard news stories, things that the public needs to know about go unreported because they are not part of a public relations campaign. Or worse, public relations managers block the news from getting out.
And much of what passes as news is actually PR campaigns dressed up as research.
Oxygen
Let’s put aside the worthy goal of keeping the public informed and get to a different commercial reality. New Zealand’s homegrown technology sector doesn’t get the media oxygen it needs to breathe. Individual journalists have learned they must build their own platforms and audiences, but this creates a fragmented landscape rather than comprehensive industry coverage.
Because overseas news feeds dominate the agenda in New Zealand, people buying here are more likely to hear about an overseas supplier than a local one. Investors will put their money overseas, skilled workers will look for jobs overseas. This is already causing problems.
The lack of balanced, impartial and thoughtful New Zealand technology journalism creates the impression there’s not much going on here.
Blogs take up some of the slack. So does Mauricio Freitas’ Geekzone website and projects like the New Zealand Tech Podcast.
Technology needs a local voice. It has to be an honest voice. That means turning over rocks some people would prefer stayed untouched.
What comes next?
Technology journalism won’t disappear entirely, but it has fundamentally changed. The model of specialised technology publications employing teams of journalists to cover a local market comprehensively is dead—at least in a market the size of New Zealand.
What survives are:
**Independent voices: **Journalists like myself who maintain their own platforms and patch together income from multiple sources.
Niche coverage: Specialist reporters focusing on telecommunications, cybersecurity or other specific sectors.
Occasional depth: Mainstream journalists who dive into technology topics when major stories break
Community efforts: Podcasts, newsletters and news services like Geekzone that are built by enthusiasts.
The question isn’t whether this is better or worse than 2014—it’s simply what exists. The business model challenges that drove the decline haven’t been solved; they’ve forced adaptation.
For New Zealand’s technology sector, this means companies must work harder to tell their stories. For readers, it means seeking out multiple sources rather than relying on a single comprehensive publication. For journalists, it means building direct relationships with audiences rather than depending on institutional employers.
**More on journalism and media:
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_This post is part of ongoing coverage about journalism business models, digital adaptation and the state of technology journalism: _
Originally published March 2013, when “paywall” was the standard industry term. Updated January 2026 after publishers learned this lesson the hard way.
Thirteen years later: Language won
The 2013 story proved correct. Publishers largely abandoned “paywall” language in their marketing and reader communications. By 2026, successful publishers talk about “subscriptions,” “memberships” or “reader support.”
**What changed: **The New York Times, Washington Post and other successful subscription operations carefully avoid “paywall” in their messaging. They offer “digital access,” “unlimited articles” or “membership benefits”—positive language emphasising what you get, not what gets in your way.
Why it mattered: Language directly impacts conversion rates. A/B testing confirmed what seemed obvious in 2013: “Subscribe for unlimited access” converts better than “Get past our paywall.” The difference can be 20-30% in signup rates.
The economics: This wasn’t just marketing spin. Subscription economics are fundamentally different from paywall economics. Subscriptions imply ongoing value and relationship; paywalls suggest barriers to overcome. Publishers learned that framing matters as much as pricing.
The holdouts who still talk about “our paywall” tend to be struggling publications. Language reveals mindset.
Don’t call it a paywall
Karen Fratti thinks publishers need to stop using the word ‘paywall’ to describe ways online sites charge readers. She prefers we talk about subscriptions.
Fratti writes:
…let’s stop talking about putting up walls to keep people out. The paywall has only led to griping from consumers who’ve reached their monthly article limit, and unique ways to get around them. We’re wordsmiths, we know words matter, and ‘paywall’ is another relic of the old media-new media debate. Knock it off.
Fratti also talks about paywalls being “a quick fix to make balance sheets look better.” This casual approach to reader relationships partly explains why so many publishers failed in the digital transition.
“Paywall” has dark imagery
I agree with Fratti on this, rightly or wrongly paywall makes me think of the watch towers and armed guard that patrolled central Berlin during the Cold War.
The paywall is the new media’s equivalent of Cold War thinking. And it is about exclusion at a time publishers need to think about inclusion.
This proved prophetic—publishers who embraced inclusive language like “supporting quality journalism” or “join our community” built more sustainable subscriber bases than those focused on barriers. By 2026, we see the full spectrum: from The Guardian’s voluntary contribution model (no “wall” at all but still annoying pop-ups) to hard paywalls with confrontational language. Guess which approach built more loyal readers?
According to Wiktionary (don’t judge me on my research, you should try googling “etymology behind the paywall”), the origin is composed of “pay + wall, by analogy with firewall”. A logical enough conclusion, especially back when paywalls were a simple “pay or leave” concept, but it’s unacceptable now that such a term still evokes the emotion of being a fourteen-year-old with a fake ID in front of a smug, grinning bouncer.
The blog concludes:
Do us a favour: next time you’re reading news online, when you hit the article limit, don’t think about whether you would pay to get past the “paywall”. Instead ask whether the articles are good enough for it to be worth your time to subscribe.
Publishers spent a lot of time and energy attempting to finesse the digital transition, including, at one point, hoping the iPad would be their savior, though that optimism proved misplaced.
How language shaped subscription success
The shift from “paywall” to “subscription” reflected deeper strategic thinking:
Successful approaches: - The Guardian at its best: “Support journalism” (voluntary contributions) - New York Times: “All access subscription” (unlimited value) - Local papers: “Community membership” (belonging + support)
Failing approaches: - “You’ve hit your article limit” (confrontational) - you’ll see this kind of message at The Guardian despite the news being theoretically free. “Subscribe to read” (transactional) - “Unlock premium content” (still barrier-focused)
The digital subscription economy became fiercely competitive. Publishers competing with Netflix, Spotify and dozens of other monthly charges couldn’t afford negative framing. Every word matters when you’re asking for recurring payments. [New Zealand publishers](billbennett.micro.blog/2026/02/2… who learned this lesson early—like the NBR—built sustainable models. Those who didn’t struggled as subscription fatigue set in.
More on journalism and media:
_This post is part of ongoing coverage about journalism business models, subscription economics and sustainable publishing: _
Originally published January 2012, when newspaper paywalls were still experimental. Updated January 2026 after fourteen years of subscription model evolution.
Fourteen years later: What we learned
The arguments made in 2012, see later down this post, proved largely correct. Newspaper paywalls did become widespread, but publishers learned painful lessons about pricing, flexibility and reader expectations. By 2026, subscription models have matured but challenges remain:
What succeeded: Major international publications like The New York Times and The Washington Post built substantial digital subscriber bases through bundled offerings, flexible pricing and quality journalism. The Times passed 10 million digital subscribers—proving the model can work at scale.
In New Zealand the NZ Herald’s paywall is regarded as a major success and the NBR continues to serve its small, yet lucrative niche, exclusively from behind a paywall.
The Herald succeeded by maintaining market dominance and offering essential local news readers couldn’t get elsewhere, while the NBR’s focused business audience mirrors the specialist financial publishers that made paywalls work from the beginning.
Meanwhile, Stuff abandoned its earlier paywall experiment before rebooting with The Post. Newer outlets like Newsroom and The Spinoff have explored voluntary contribution models—proving there’s no single formula for New Zealand’s small, fragmented market.
What failed: Regional newspapers that simply slapped paywalls on existing content without improving quality or user experience. Many discovered that readers resist poor value propositions, regardless of price.
What changed: Publishers learned that language matters—“subscriptions” sell better than “paywalls." They also discovered the importance of flexible options: day passes, article bundles and tiered subscriptions address the commitment barrier identified in 2012.
The core insight remains true: online and print are fundamentally different products requiring different pricing models.
We knew early on that paywalls work well for specialist financial publishers. In 2012 it was not clear if they could work for more general news publications. We now know that they can, but it is not straightforward. More publishers have failed to successfully impose formal paywalls or subscriptions than those that have succeeded.
Readers happily paid for their print newspapers. Some still do. New Zealand’s still existing printed daily newspapers cost around NZ$2.
So you might think NZ$2 a day for the online paper is reasonable.
Here are reasons why it isn’t:
Print newspapers are made and distributed. The cost of running a print plant and running trucks is higher than the cost of moving pixels around. Newspaper sellers take a cut of the cover price. Any on-line sales would be direct. The potential cost savings are huge. Readers expect publishers to pass on some of the cost savings.
Readers who buy print newspapers generally read a number of stories. They could conceivably read the paper cover to cover then do the crosswords and Sudoku puzzles. Nobody reads like this online. As a rule online readers skip from publication to publication grazing on material. This behavior makes justifying subscription costs difficult, as readers may only want occasional access.
Print newspapers don’t have realistic free competitors. Broadcast radio and TV news is free, but it doesn’t directly compete with printed papers in the way, say, Radio New Zealand’s web site is just a click away from Stuff.co.nz. This competition makes it challenging to earn subscription revenue from journalism.
For all these reasons, newspaper publishers are asking considerably less from on-line readers than print readers pay.
And rightly so. Instead they sell subscriptions. The Australian charges A$3 a week for an online subscription. You can’t buy one day’s on-line paper, nor can readers make a small payment to reach a single paywalled story. In fact, while the price is advertised as dollars per week, customers have to buy a whole month’s access at a time.
For all these reasons, newspaper publishers charge inline readers considerably less than the print cover price suggests.
Modern publishers offer various approaches:
The New York Times charges around US$5 per week for basic digital access, with options for day passes and bundled print+digital
The Guardian uses a voluntary contribution model, requesting support without hard paywalls. The continual needy pop-ups are profoundly annoying to casual readers.
Substack newsletters let individual journalists charge $5-15 per month directly to readers
Yet the 2012 problem persists: most models still require monthly commitments. Publishers have experimented with micropayments and day passes, but implementation remains inconsistent. The subscription economy challenge means every news subscription competes with Netflix, Spotify, You Tube and dozens of other services.
Asking readers to pay in advance for a whole month at a time still seems wrong. Sure, many readers already subscribe to a daily newspaper delivery, but many others don’t. They buy a print paper as and when they feel a need. There needs to be an on-line equivalent requiring less commitment.
Subscription overload
The challenge has intensified since 2012. Subscription fatigue is real—readers juggle multiple subscriptions across entertainment, software and news.
The “just $3 a week” pitch that seemed reasonable in 2012 now competes with 20 other similar requests. This creates a second digital divide—between those who can afford multiple news subscriptions and those who can’t.
Public-interest journalism becomes gated behind paywalls, raising questions about informed citizenship and democracy. Some publishers have recognized this. Major investigations are often made free. Breaking news typically sits outside paywalls. But the tension between business sustainability and public service remains unresolved.
Publishers need to think carefully about their terminology. As argued elsewhere on this site, the language of ‘subscriptions, not paywalls’ matters when framing the value proposition.”
**More on journalism and media: **
_This post is part of ongoing coverage about journalism business models, digital adaptation and subscription economics:
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Rupert Murdoch once called the iPad a saviour of newspapers. The reality was smaller savings, fewer readers and little relief for publishers.
This post was originally published in April 2010, days after the first iPad launched. Updated January 2026 with fifteen years of hindsight on how the tablet revolution reshaped—but didn’t save—news media.
Rupert Murdoch described Apple’s iPad as a “potential saviour of newspapers” not long after the tablet computer first appeared. At the time, his optimism was misplaced. Both the numbers and the economics showed otherwise.
Small savings, big costs remain
Moving to the iPad saves publishers money on paper, printing, wrapping and distribution. Yet Apple’s 30 percent cut of subscription revenue is roughly the same as the margin taken by newsagents and other retailers. Editorial costs don’t go away, so the overall savings are relatively small.
More importantly, fewer readers are willing to pay for digital subscriptions than for printed copies. Evidence in 2010 suggested only five percent of readers would pay. Even if that number had climbed to 25 percent, copy sales revenue would still fall.
Fewer readers means less advertising
Print newspapers also enjoy a secondary audience. A copy bought in a shop is often passed from reader to reader. Digital editions make sharing harder because of copy protection. That reduces the number of readers per subscription and in turn makes advertising less valuable.
True, digital readers are more identifiable, which improves targeting. But advertisers ultimately want reach: fewer readers meant less ad revenue overall.
Analysts warn of limits
Ovum, a technology analyst firm, reached the same conclusion. In a May 2010 report, principal analyst Adrian Drury wrote: “Apple’s much-hyped tablet device alone will fail to secure the future of news and magazine publishing.”
He argued that while the iPad offered publishers new distribution channels, it was still just one device. Sales volumes would take time to build, while the challenge of finding a sustainable business model for publishing was immediate. Ovum also predicted the iPad media market would quickly become congested.
A turning point, not a saviour
Apple forecast it would sell 13.2 million iPads by the end of 2011. That compares with 25 million iPhones shipped in 2009 alone. While the iPad and later tablets reshaped media, they were never the cure for declining newspaper fortunes Murdoch and others hoped for.
Fifteen years later: What actually happened
The prediction proved accurate. The iPad didn’t save newspapers, though tablets have reshaped how people consume news.
By 2026, newspaper print circulation has collapsed to a fraction of 2010 levels. The iPad’s failure wasn’t about the device—it was about the business model. Publishers eventually learned that how they frame digital subscriptions matters more than the delivery mechanism.
What actually saved some news organisations wasn’t a technology but direct reader relationships. Email newsletters, podcasts and reader-supported journalism have all succeeded where app-based distribution failed. Journalists who learned to use their core skills in new ways thrived, even as their erstwhile employers struggled.
The iPad became ubiquitous—Apple sold over 500 million iPads in the fifteen years since Murdoch’s prediction. But news apps didn’t become the dominant way people consume journalism. Instead, social media, web browsers and direct subscriptions won out.
Meanwhile, the cost-cutting that seemed attractive about digital distribution—no printing, paper or physical distribution costs—accelerated newsroom layoffs. The savings went to shareholders, not journalism. As predicted, newspapers missed crucial opportunities to adapt their business models when they had the chance.
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This is a story I wrote in March 2010 about search engines replacing real people. Updated January 2026, with AI promising to replace even more human expertise. The question matters more than ever: what do we lose when algorithms replace institutional knowledge?
From librarians to Google to AI: What we keep losing
When this was written in 2010, search engines had just replaced newspaper libraries. By 2026, AI promises to replace search engines. But each replacement loses something valuable.
2010: Librarians knew context, could suggest angles, remembered the unofficial story behind the official one. Google found keywords but missed nuance.
2026: AI chatbots generate answers but can’t tell you “actually, you should talk to the person who was there” or “the official version isn’t the whole story.” They hallucinate facts, confidently wrong.
What newspapers lost wasn’t just a filing system—it was institutional memory embodied in people. This loss contributed to journalism’s decline in ways publishers didn’t anticipate.
Newspapers 50 years ago
When I started as a journalist in the late 1970s, newspapers and magazines were still put together using hot metal type. In theory union demarcation meant journalists never got close to the compositor machines in the bowels of the newspaper building, but there were a few times when I did.
At times I catch a faint metallic smell that reminds me of those days.
I also remember the clack of typewriters, telephones with bells, the noisy newsroom clash of egos, the mumbling from the subs desk and the late night questions from the proof-readers. I’ve never been a smoker, but years spent working in newsrooms probably did as much damage to my lungs. Almost every desk had an sh-tray.
And all the pub lunches I ate while waiting for contacts to spill the beans and deliver an exclusive punished my liver.
Those were the days
Of course I miss the shabby, rumpled glamour of the old days. Journalism was fun then. It can still be fun. Although it’s now a different kind of fun. The craft fundamentals remain, but the institutional support structure disappeared.
Working as an independent journalist in 2026 means you’re not just a reporter—you’re also your own librarian, fact-checker, editor, publisher and subscription manager. The tools changed, but without the institutional knowledge those librarians provided, something irreplaceable was lost.
Print could be glorious
Seeing your story on the home page of a newspaper web site is nothing compared to walking through town where all the newsstands show your latest story. There is thrill when you pass people in cafes or on the bus reading the news you wrote the day before.
Another romance I feel newspapers lost when moving to modern digital systems were their extensive clipping and photo libraries. They employed knowledgable librarians and the other custodians of arcane information who just knew how to find relevant material fast.
The story behind the story
Often, while you were in the newspaper library checking up on old stories, the librarian was often able to chime in with a valuable snippet of extra background information. You might have the clippings, but they’d have the memory of what happened at the time—the story behind the story.
Google did for them.
Sometimes Google can do a fine job of finding old information, but even at its best, it is not as comprehensive. Most of all, I miss chatting with an intelligent human being then seeing a Manilla folder of clips and photos arrive on my desk an hour or so later along with a memo reminding me to go and chat with someone involved with the original story.
Computers will never replace that.
What publishers lost by cutting librarians
Newspaper libraries and their keepers were among the first casualties of cost-cutting. Publishers saw them as expensive overhead—paying salaries for people to manage old clippings when “everything’s online now.”
This proved shortsighted in multiple ways:
Lost institutional memory: New reporters couldn’t learn from experienced librarians who remembered decades of local stories, relationships and context.
Lost verification: A good librarian would say “that doesn’t sound right” when you got facts wrong. Google just returns what you search for.
Lost discovery: Librarians suggested connections you hadn’t thought of. “While you’re looking at that 1995 story, you should also see what happened in 1987.” Algorithms optimize for what you already know you want.
Lost local knowledge: As local journalism collapsed, there was no one left who remembered 30 years of civic history—who ran for mayor before, which projects failed, why certain streets were named what they were.
This wasn’t just nostalgia. It was investigative capacity. Modern journalists spend hours googling what a librarian could have told them in five minutes—if librarians still existed.
AI doesn’t solve what Google couldn’t
In 2026, AI tools promise to replace both Google and human expertise. ChatGPT, Claude and others can summarise old news, suggest story angles, even draft articles.
But they can’t tell you:
“The official record says X, but everyone in town knows Y”
“You should talk to the former mayor—she’s still around and has files”
“That company’s press release contradicts what they said five years ago”
“Be careful—that source has an agenda you should know about”
AI has no smell for when something doesn’t add up. No memory of watching this play out before. No sense of “this reminds me of 1993 when…”
The skills good librarians possessed—informed pattern recognition across decades, institutional knowledge, human judgment—can’t be replicated by algorithms trained on text.
Publishers thought they were cutting costs by eliminating librarians. They were actually eliminating competitive advantage.
**More on journalism and media:
**
This post is part of ongoing coverage about journalism craft, institutional knowledge and the newsroom changes that shaped modern media:
In 2008 the world was waiting for a digital device that would do for newspapers what the iPod did for music. At the time there were no obvious candidates but a few promising developments.
There were hopes that a dedicated ePaper device might fill the gap. This would be like the Kindle, but better suited for frequently updated news reports. The Kindle’s physical format was promising and its ability to display crisp, easy-to-read text. It would help if the news device could display editorial photographs.
A story in ComputerWorld looked the future of ePaper, which the author said was “just around the corner”.
ePaper looked a plausible candidate
ePaper clearly had potential. It could disrupt publishing business models which were already under attack from the internet.
Yet, at the time, ePaper is “just around the corner” was questionable. Claims like that can never be taken seriously until practical products hit the market.
I’ve been writing about technology since 1980. In that year I saw my first voice recognition system and the first example of what we now call electronic books or eBooks. The proud makers of the 1981 voice recognition device said their hardware would be “ready for prime time” within two years and keyboards would quickly be a thing of the past.
In 2008 voice recognition technology is still around two years away from prime time.
eBooks didn’t hit take-off
Likewise, in 1981 electronic book makers were confidently predicting we’d soon be cuddling up at night with their hardware. By 2008 there still wasn’t been anything as impressive or as easy to read as ink stamped or squirted on crushed, dead trees. Old fashioned books refused to die. Printed newspapers, on the other hand, appeared to be on the way out.
Another possibility at the time was the iPod-derived iPhone, which was still new in 2008. It has a tiny screen and people were skeptical about its ability to become the iPod for news.
In the meantime, the internet continued to build momentum delivering news and other information to desktops, laptops and handheld devices like Apple’s iPhone. Although none of these were anything like as satisfactory an as paper, people could use them to read news. Many had already switched to getting news that way.
The view from 2025
Looking back, the phone handset won by default due to ubiquity, not superior reading experience. Today the majority of news readers get their fix through their iPhone or Android phone.
The iPad and other tablets became a supplementary news reading device. They are ideal for immersive reading but lacking the necessary ubiquity to be the sole news reader.
It turns out all the fretting about screen quality and creating a better reading experience was focusing on the wrong problems. Yes, there are better devices for consuming text-based material, but the device in everyone’s pocket is always going to win any competition.
What was not apparent in 2008 is that publishers would adapt to the preferred format. In time the dominance of the mobile-first design model, where speed and scrolling trump the print-like page fidelity promised by ePaper.
In many cases news publishers build dedicated apps for phones and tablets. This has the added advantage of deepening their relationship with readers and increasing their ability to learn more about those readers so they can better target advertising.
New models changing: Paywalls and the creator economy
Before anyone had heard of the internet, newspapers made fortunes from physical copy sales. In the UK, the big newspapers would sell millions of copies each day. the revenue from print sales was so large that advertising barely featured in the most popular British papers.
In most of the rest of the world, newspapers were financed by advertising sales.
The transition from physical sales to digital revenue models has been hard. Up to a point it is still a work in progress. At one point the iPad model looked promising. This involved iTunes-enabled micro-transactions. Some titles still sell subscriptions this way.
Meanwhile the websites use paywalls and subscriptions as a way of charging for content. Other, smaller news operations use alternative subscription models.
Early attempts at paywalls failed. While they worked for publishers with exclusive coverage of lucrative niche markets, most obviously in business journalism, more general news publishers struggled. Major players like the New York Times and The Guardian relied on massive scale delivering readers to advertisers with high-quality, high-cost journalism.
Advertising Failure
In practice, tech giants Google and Meta (Facebook) captured nearly all the digital advertising revenue, forcing newspapers to go subscription-only to survive. The Guardian continues a free model, but carpet-bombs readers with needy promotions begging for ‘donations,’ degrading the reading experience for those unable or unwilling to pay.
Most surviving news publishers rely on traditional paywalls and subscriptions. The irony is that insisting on subscriptions gives publishers greater visibility of exactly who is reading. This information is valuable when it comes to selling better-targeted advertising.
Beyond the institutional paywall is the rise of Substack and other newsletter models. This site runs on Ghost Pro, which offers an alternative approach to online publishing and newsletters. There’s no charge here, but adding one would be relatively easy.
The rise of the independent journalist blogger
Substack and newsletters represent the true decentralised evolution of the “journalist blogger” first discussed on this site in 2008.
With it journalists can cut out the publisher and take the vast majority of the revenue.
It’s long been known that the two ways to make money off any media in the digital age are aggregation (putting things together, e.g., major news sites) and disaggregation (pulling them apart, e.g., individual newsletters).
If a journalist focuses on a high-value niche—most likely business, finance or specific areas of politics—there’s a ready market for their expertise. This is the long tail of journalism. You don’t need millions of readers to make a specialist niche pay, a thousand subscribers paying a modest sum is enough for a reasonable income.
News and journalism are not like music
Let’s go back to the start of this post, the point about “a digital device that would do for newspapers what the iPod did for music.” In some ways, the analogy is unrealistic. Today, the iPod functionality is wrapped into every iPhone. Android phones act the same way.
Music fans can buy all-you-can-eat streaming music from Spotify or Apple Music. They can also buy single tracks and albums. These models never worked for news. Instead, we have paywalls or the Patreon-Substack direct creator support model. And that brings us to the key point: The real disruption was not about the device, but the revenue model.
In 2008, one UK journalist predicted the future of news would be a “small hub of professional journalists” with citizen journalists on the periphery. He was wrong.
The distinction between the “professional journalist” and the “citizen journalist” is now obsolete. The device (the phone) was merely the delivery mechanism; the real iPod-like disruption was the technology that allowed the writer to get paid directly.
The new professional journalist is simply one who can:
Own their audience: Control the email list (Substack/Ghost).
Command a niche: Offer expertise valuable enough to justify a subscription.
The modern news landscape is not a single hub, but a decentralised network of powerful, independent creators competing with large institutions. In 2025, the writer’s brand is often stronger than the publisher’s brand. That’s a concept that was almost unthinkable when this article was first written.
This post from 2013 looks at one reason why ebooks failed to break into the mainstream.
A year ago Dan Gilmor complained about greedy US publishers forcing ebook prices to climb by between 30 and 50 percent.
In the US, electronic books are now priced at the same, sometimes higher, than the hardback version of the same book. As Gilmore points out, this is a terrible deal because unlike physical books, you can’t resell, trade or give away your finished ebook.
The same dumb thinking is at work in the music and movie industries where digital media costs as much as physical media.
Physical books simply should not be cheaper than digital books
I’ve made this argument before, I’ll make it again. Printers use raw materials and machines to make physical books, CDs or DVDs. They package and ship them to warehouses before shipping again to stores.
Factories, packaging companies, shipping firms, wholesalers and retailers all clip the ticket. These are input costs and they’re not cheap, they can account for over half the retail cost.
While we can understand publishers wanting to recoup some of the cost-cutting benefit from digital media, they can’t expect to have it all. Doing so has three direct consequences:
Consumers see high prices as a rip-off. This has the knock-on effect of undermining otherwise valid moral arguments against copyright piracy.
It slows migration from the old low-margin physical model to the new higher margin model. Why would consumers choose what is still an inferior experience when the cost of hardware plus higher cost of media makes it more expensive?
Reduced sales mean set-up costs of a book, CD or DVD are spread over fewer purchases. Surely this is a time when publishers need to seed the market.
At the start of 2013 we’re at a point where the decline in printed book sales has stabilized while the hitherto triple-digit growth in ebook sales has fallen to a still impressive 34 percent. And sales of ebook readers plunged 36 percent in 2012.
So where do we go from here? Will publishers cut ebook prices sharing some of the extra margin with their customers or will they paint themselves into a corner?
The story says researchers at Norway’s Stavanger University asked people to read the same short story on a Kindle and on paper.
Those who read on paper did a better job of remembering the events than those who read on a Kindle.
A similar study looked at a school student comprehension test which showed those who read the paper document performed better than those who read digitally.
None of this surprises me, it mirrors my experience. I’ve noticed I get more from reading print than digitally. Also my eyes tire much slower with print.
If I have a serious editing or sub-editing job to do, I’ve learnt that proofreading a printed document is more accurate than working directly onscreen.
Knowing readers absorb less with digital books is unlikely to change anything. In theory nothing is likely to stop the world moving from print to pixels although publishers have plenty of scope to screw up. Yet, that aside, with e-books there’s a danger we’ll know more and understand less.
The frustrations with the format go beyond economics. While the initial debate was about the ‘ebook price swindle’, we are now finding that the proprietary nature of these files also makes deep reading and comprehension significantly harder.
This story was originally posted June 2009. It remains relevant today.
People spend less time reading online news than reading printed newspapers because reading a screen is more mentally and physically taxing. For a closely related take on this see E-books harder to read, hard to comprehend.
This has consequences.
In Newspapers online – the real dilemma, Australian online media expert Ben Shepherd examined why online newspapers earn proportionately less money than print newspapers. He says it comes down to engagement. A typical online consumer of Rupert Murdoch’s products spends just 12.6 minutes a month reading News Corporation web sites. In comparison the average newspaper reader spends 2.8 hours a week with their printed copy.
Print still better in some ways
There are other factors. But I’d argue, the technology behind online reading is part of the problem:
Newspapers and magazines are typically printed at 600 dots per inch or higher resolution.
Computer screens typically display text and pictures at 72 pixels per inch. Some display at 96 dots per inch. This was the case in 2009 when the story was orignally written today’s phones typically have 300 to 500 dots per inch. Tablets are around the 200 to 300 DPI range. Laptops are 150 to 250 DPI. Desktop displays vary from 90 to 160 DPI.
Contrast is usually far better on paper than on screen.
Screens often include distracting elements. This can be particularly bad where online news sites have video or audio advertising on the same page as news stories.
Lower resolution means it takes more effort for a human brain to convert text into meaningful information. Screens are fine for relatively small amounts of text, but over the long haul your eyes and your brain will get tired faster even when there are no distractions. You’ll find it harder to concentrate and your comprehension will suffer.
This post was written in March 2013 when Google killed Reader. It is a warning about relying on free services from big tech companies has been validated repeatedly since then. Google has killed over 200 products including Google+, Inbox, Hangouts, Stadia, Podcasts and many more. The lesson remains: sometimes free is too high a price. Updated 2025.
The company doesn’t make any money from its free web-based RSS reader, so its death doesn’t come as a surprise. After all,
Google is a business, not a charity.
Google Reader has been the best tool for that job for a long time. It has been so good that it has killed off most of its competition.
Nothing else compares
Twitter, Facebook and other social media tools simply don’t compare for this kind of work. RSS feeds provide comprehensive lists, social media tends to give a fleeting snapshot.
There are other RSS tools, none of them work as well as Google Reader. It has the best interface for quickly scanning large numbers of posts, it has decent search tools built-in.
If Google started charging for Google Reader, I’d happily pay. It would be worth the fee.
There’s a disturbing side to Google’s decision to shut Google Reader. Before Reader there was a healthy set of competing RSS readers. One by one these fell by the wayside because they were unable to compete with the search giant’s free service.
Google entered the space, wiped out the competition and now it is leaving the space.
PR and marketing people hate it when journalists describe products as ‘cheap’. We get phone calls asking us to change the word to ‘budget’ or ‘affordable’.
That’s because while ‘cheap’ means you can get something at a low price, it has a secondary meaning where the word can be used to mean ‘inferior’.
It’s not as though ‘budget’ doesn’t have a similar implication when the word is used as an adjective. No-one thinks a budget airline is going to deliver a good experience.
Oh yeah?
There’s a “says who?” problem with ‘affordable’.
That $3000 laptop might be affordable to a marketing manager. A bus driver or nurse might not consider it affordable.
Journalists should not use words like that. There’s a risk of making readers feel bad about themselves. There’s a danger we’re acting as unpaid promoters when using the language of marketing.
We’re not perfect. I searched my site and found I have used the word 40 times over 13 years and 1500 posts.
In many cases the word is a quotation.
Guilty of using cheap
Yet, your honour, at times I’m guilty as charged.
I’ve used ‘affordable’ at least a dozen times without stopping to think there could be readers who don’t agree with that word choice.
The same logic applies to the word ‘inexpensive’. My inexpensive might not be your inexpensive.
Much of the time journalists use words like ‘cheap’ or ‘affordable’ to contrast with ‘expensive’ or ‘unaffordable’.
Now there are two words that would get a marketing person annoyed if they appeared in a story about a product.
Although not always. The Samsung sales executives showing off the company’s folding phones a year ago were happy to position the product at the premium end of the range. A high price can be a marketing strategy.
As can ‘cheap’. Yet for some reason marketing people prefer that we don’t mention that.
A basic media guide for people who may find themselves suddenly thrust into the spotlight on behalf of a company or organisation.
Companies and organisations still need to keep media communication channels open. That way they get to tell their story. At the same time investors, business partners, employees and customers stay informed.
Sure, these days they can use more direct channels to reach these groups. They can control messages in direct channels.
That’s not always the best way to tell stories and it doesn’t necessarily have as much credibility as when that message is filtered through an independent outlet.
When news comes to you
And there are times when the media comes knocking on the company’s door.
You might think you don’t need to worry about any of this because your job puts you in a back room role you don’t need to worry about communications. You may work for a company that thinks it has watertight external communications strategies. Or that the company employs professionals to do all the communication heavy lifting.
Yet even if your employer has access to the brightest and best communications experts, you can still find yourself acting as spokesperson.
A credible, knowledgeable voice is powerful communications
Let’s redo that last sentence: If your employer uses the best communications experts, you are even more likely to find yourself in the media front line.
That’s because experienced journalists see through the platitudes and feel-good nonsense spouted by corporate spin-doctors.
Journalists may not immediately be able to dig deep enough to find the real story behind a smokescreen, yet they know what a smokescreen smells like.
Putting genuine, but trained and fully briefed, voices in front of the media works to a company’s advantage.
The best storyteller
A communications professional is not always the best spokesperson. There will be times when someone with deeper knowledge or experience is a better storyteller.
In extreme cases you can be forced to speak to the media even if your employer prefers you to stay in the background.
All of this means that being able to articulate a company’s position is a key skill.
Crisis management
Dealing with communications when things go wrong is known as crisis management. Smart firms put crisis management plans in place long before any problems, anticipated or not, arrive. This saves valuable time when troubles appear.
Developing a crisis management plan is best left for another time. The key elements are establishing lines of communications and putting the right people in place who can articulate a company’s point of view to the media.
Which means it is a good idea to give all senior managers media training.
Let’s assume for now you don’t have media training, there are no well-developed lines of communications and you know nothing of any crisis management plans. Things have gone badly wrong and you are in the thick of it.
What should you do if a journalist quizzes you about a potentially damaging news story?
Good stories, not good news
Before we go any further, I have skin in this game. I am a journalist, I cover business and technology, I write news. I like to write good stories.
Good doesn’t necessarily mean positive from the company or organisation’s point of view. The news media likes stories with reader interest – from your point of view that might be anything but good.
I prefer to go straight to the most obvious news source – the man or woman in the department dealing with the matter – and ask direct questions.
Getting to the bottom of the story
The idea isn’t to catch someone out or make someone look stupid—Ok. We all know there are some journalists who do operate this way. Dealing with them needs another post – the goal is to get to the bottom of the story, find facts and cut through the spin.
This was how it always worked when I was a young journalist. We would keep extensive (paper) contact books of key names in organisations to call when a story broke and to call every so often when canvassing for potential stories.
These days most employers expect employees to take one of two courses of action. They might prefer it if the employee said nothing, refuses to speak and blocks all questions.
Or they might expect an employee to tell outright lies. More likely this is never explicitly asked of employees, but people working in companies tend to know by osmosis if they work for bosses who expect them to lie.
Both courses of action are equally damaging, both to the company and to the employee.
Telling lies is dumb
Aside from any ethical considerations, telling lies is just plain stupid.
Sooner or later the truth will emerge and you will be on the record as a liar. Your employer won’t look any better.
You might get away with this. A future employer will not know, not care or may even be impressed you lied to cover your previous employer’s backside.
Maybe.
Other people will remember your lies. And that will harm your reputation over the long-term, maybe even your business.
Liar, liar
More to the point the journalists you lied to will know you are a liar. And their colleagues do. Journalists move around between companies, pretty soon most people in the media will know you are a liar.
At any point a rival might remember those lies and make them public. Your lie might be legally actionable. But even if it is not, it gives your competitors powerful ammunition the next time you want to say anything in public.
Blockheads
Blocking questions can make things sound worse than they are.
It can mean you or your employer don’t get an opportunity to put the record straight at the earliest opportunity.
There are worse possibilities.
Suppose you were to read in a newspaper, ‘company X refused to comment on claims that it was trading while bankrupt’? What does this make you think about the company?
Over the years I’ve come up against more advanced forms of blocking, but they all amount to the same thing. ‘The executive responsible for the exploding television monitors could not be contacted yesterday’ does not make the company sound innocent.
What to do when the media calls
Rules number one, two and three are do not tell lies.
Don’t even consider it. It is better to say nothing.
If you don’t want to answer questions or are not authorised to speak, find someone else who can.
There’s nothing wrong with telling a journalist that you aren’t able to help with enquiries but your immediate boss can. Make a joke and tell them is above your pay grade. That’s acceptable so long as someone higher up the tree does speak to the press.
Journalists don’t tend to ask trick questions, but it pays to listen carefully to the exact form of their question and attempt to hear what is not said. Most journalists have excellent listening skills. Some of the best industry interviewees are the same.
Pushing the pause button
There’s also nothing wrong with telling a journalist that you, or whoever can speak, is busy but will call back shortly – when you do this, calling back quickly is important. Keep their deadlines in mind.
This approach can buy you time to think about exactly what to say, check facts, workshop ideas with colleagues or warn the boss. Then take a deep breath and calm those nerves before calling back.
At this point you might even want to take advice from a communications professional. It’s not unusual for a journalist to call an executive with a question, get a pause, then hear back from a PR manager or someone in a similar role. It’s not as good as getting information from the horses’ mouth, but it’ll do.
Media Toolkit: Understanding the News Cycle
For deeper insights into how the media functions, how spin works and how to read between the lines of industry reporting.
It’s not hard to understand why public relations companies push clients to respond to negative news stories. Yet responding may not always be the best strategy.
Apart from anything else, PR firms bill clients for hosing down bad reports. A response means more business for them. A crisis can be lucrative.
From their point of view, it can feel as if responding to a bad news story is when they earn their money. In a bigger firm, the senior practitioners – which can mean higher charge out rates – often step in to take charge of the issue.
PR companies rarely have difficulty persuading companies to respond to bad news. Spirited defence is hardwired into the DNA of most companies operating in Australia or New Zealand.
But response isn’t alway the best strategy.
A bad story may not a crisis
A bad or embarrassing story isn’t necessarily a crisis. Often these things blow over and are quickly forgotten. Journalist are quick to move on to the next story.
Companies often make matters worse by overreacting and generating fresh publicity. That carefully worded response reminds people of something bad they had already dismissed.
It can breath new life into the negativity. That bad story stays in the news cycle for another day.
That can lead to the temptation for another response and the story cycle lengthens.
Know when to shut up
Some responses use such insincere language, that people who had previously given the company the benefit of the doubt may rethink their take on events.
There are times when a poor response can turn a minor upset into a crisis.
Even a well thought-out, sensitive response written by the smartest PR professionals can blow-up or be read the wrong way. Often PR responses are clumsy. They can open fresh channels of attack.
Each case is different, but there will be times when the best strategy is to shut up. Let the news cycle play out.
This post was originally written in 2008, hence the mention of Blackberrys. It’s just as relevant in 2026.
Any fool can write a good press release that hits its target audience and creates an impact.
Writing one that fails means work. There are people who have mastered the art.
As an editor I’ve seen some great efforts over the years. I’d like to share them with you.
Here are my top ten tips for making sure press releases get minimum attention:
1. Cripple its chances of reaching editors and journalists
Everyone can read plain text messages in the body of an email. The message will almost certainly get through to any kind of desktop email clients, all flavours of web mail, as well as Blackberrys, iPhones and Palm Pilots.
To reach less than 100 per cent of your potential audience, try putting some of these clever barriers in the way.
Attachments are an effective way of cutting down the reach of your press release. People reading email on mobile devices have trouble reading them. Spam filters treat them with suspicion and if you’re lucky the recipient may use Lotus Notes or some other arcane technology as a client and have difficulty decoding the attachment.
Another advantage of attachments is that you can trim your audience further by using difficult-to-open file formats: such as the new .docx file format used by Word 2007 – many journalists will struggle to read them.
Attachments are also great for bulking up the size of your release so it won’t squeeze through email gateways. If you’re clever, use high-resolution logos in, say, your Word attachments. These add nothing to the press release but can swiftly push the file size over the email gateway threshold.
A further reason for sending a press release as an attachment is its invisibility to email search. So, when a journalist finally decides to look for your press release among the hundreds and thousands in their email in-box, it will be difficult to find.
2. Minimise relevance
One way to make sure your press release fails is to make sure it has no relevance to any sane audience. For example, if you are a technology company and you buy a new fleet of cars you can squander your PR budget and make sure any future release goes directly to an editor’s recycle bin by sending the story to the technology press.
3. Send your press release out whenever
Timeliness is everything. So send releases out when you feel like it to boost your chances of failure. Better still, for print publications try waiting until five minutes after the final deadline. For online publications, wait until the story has already broken elsewhere. Editors love that.
4. Organise schedules so contacts are unavailable for interview
Good journalists are annoying creatures. Rather than printing your press release verbatim and passing the contact details over to their advertising departments, they may want to speak to the people mentioned in your releases.
A tried and tested technique for avoiding these complications is to send the people overseas shortly after dispatching the release. International communications are good these days, so just packing them off to a partner conference in Atlanta isn’t good enough, you need to make sure they are on an 18 hour trans-pacific flight or, better still, holidaying on a remote island.
5. Use poor writing skills
Obvious when you think about it. If your writing is poor and confused so that editors and journalists can’t understand your message you kill two birds with one stone.
First, you’ll make sure the first message gets spiked in the too hard basket.
Second, as a bonus, you can establish your reputation as an illiterate idiot that isn’t worth bothering with under any circumstances. That way, your future releases will go straight to the junk pile without even being read.
6. Try bullying
Sadly this powerful technique is underused. By threatening to talk to a journalist’s editor, or an editor’s boss about their poor response to your press release you can permanently undermine your relationship with scores of people (remember journalists talk to each other so this is an efficient way of burning lots of bridges).
Another approach is to tell the journalist the company in question is advertising in the publication thus triggering their professional editorial independence.
7. Don’t bother with press release photographs
Journalists and editors like photographs. They love good photographs. By making sure they are no photographs of any description you’ll increase the chances that your press release is regarded as useless.
If you think that’s taking things too far, try sending out crappy, unusable photos. Photos with dozens of un-named people work well in this respect. Getting people to hold champagne glasses, stand in front of company logos, gather around an unreadable normal-size bank cheque or impersonate public enemy number one mug shots are all effective techniques for creating instantly ignorable press release photographs.
8. Send it to everyone regardless
This is a great way to upset journalists and degrade both your personal and company reputation. At the same time if you work for a PR agency you can bill the client heaps for having a, er, comprehensive, mailing list and then bill them for time as you and your staff spend all day on the phone dealing with angry editors.
9. Keep your press release as dull as possible
Journalists prefer interesting stories. Public relations professionals recognise this and use clever tricks like passive sentences, boring ideas, irrelevant background facts, tired clichéd adjectives and implausible anodyne quotes to turn them off and help speed their press releases on their way to the great recycle bin in the sky.
In-house and government public relations people are usually better at delivering boring releases than agency staff – if you’re worried your writing sparkles too much, they have much to teach you.
10. Make sure the subject line obscures the message
Even experienced public relations operatives can slip up by giving an email release an interesting subject line. The danger is that after putting in all the hard work required to guarantee nobody takes the slightest notice of their press release they use active language to put a relevant, timely subject line message that tempts editors and journalists to open the document and read more.
The good news is there are fail-safe subject lines that are certain to turn off editors and journalists so they can just skip past your release. A classic subject line like press release will probably work, if that’s too simple try **important press release **or important press release from Company Name.
A neat by-product of badly written subject lines is they can fool spam detection engines into rejecting a message altogether; phrases like important announcement from Company Name or message for Clark Kent can come in handy here. Going straight to spam is the most efficient way of making sure your press release fails.
Want to guarantee journalists ignore your follow-up emails? Start them with “Good morning” so your message looks thoughtless when it arrives at 3pm, or worse, when they read it at 11pm while catching up on email.
Use time-appropriate greetings if you want to look professional. Or don’t, if your goal is to signal that you haven’t thought about the person on the receiving end.
I don’t understand why PRs give editors exclusives – because for the most part it does the PR and their client more harm than good.You see, if a story is newsworthy then it’ll run anyway – and if it isn’t then giving it as an exclusive isn’t going to make much difference.
Kaufman goes on to say if a PR person gives an editor a decent story as an exclusive, it will upset other editors. He says piss off, but this is a family website.
This happens all the time here in New Zealand. The practice is counter-productive.
It can certainly destroy trust a PR person or company has built.
Exclusive… oh yeah?
Waking-up, reading a so-called exclusive story then later in the day getting a press release covering the same ground happens too often in New Zealand.
Often this happens when a public relations person thinks they might get sympathetic or splashy coverage of their story if they play favourites.
PRs have approached me offering to trade an exclusive for a favourable position: often the cover of a print title. They may even ask to vet the copy in return for the story. This, in effect, can mean an editor enters into a conspiracy to mislead readers.
Many ‘exclusives’ are rubbish stories
Often stories ‘leaked’ this way are rubbish – they read more like advertising than news. Editors giving the press release an early run are manipulated into becoming part of a marketing exercise.
My response to this is to stop trusting the PR person behind the leak. This means they’ll have difficulty slipping any of their future propaganda past me. In extreme cases I’ve ignored any further communication from the source. And I’ve been known to make a formal complaint to the client. In one case I had to tell a PR’s other clients I could no longer work with their agent.
And anyway, if a company thinks it is that important to get their message in a publication they should look at advertising.
If journalists do respond to your press release, make sure you know how to handle their questions professionally:
Modern public relations people often don’t understand how the media works. Many don’t get journalism.
This wasn’t a problem in the past when most PR people were ex-journalists. Today, many publicists have never seen the inside of an editorial office.
Or if they have, they haven’t seen how editors and journalist work. They know little about what makes journalists tick. What motivates and drives reporters and editors.
Harmful PR failures
As a result many PR people end up harming their client’s chances of getting publicity. Or at least the right publicity. Instead they get in the way of journalists and annoy editors.
Which is where Dan Kaufman’s Dealing with grumpy editors gets its name. To public relations people journalists often appear grumpy, rude and obstructive.
This should not surprise anyone. You wouldn’t believe some of the nonsense editors have to put up with from PR people. Some of that nonsense passes for wisdom or craft in the PR industry.
Rubbish public relations
After 17 years before the editorial masthead Kaufman has seen some rubbish PR. He has also seen some sharp operators. In this book he provides practical advice for communications workers wanting to get an editor’s attention.
If you work in PR, you may not agree with everything Kaufman says. He tells it like it is in straightforward language. It is a valuable work, worth every cent of the ridiculously low $4.99 he is charging for the PDF version.
I can come to your offices – or meet you in a fancy restaurant – and give you the same advice for $150 an hour. So on second thoughts, don’t buy the book. Hire me instead.
Grumpy editors
In the spirit of good journalism, I should disclose my connection with Kaufman. I hired him as a junior journalist some 17 years or so ago. Hopefully he wasn’t thinking of me when he gave his book its title.
Although original ideas occasionally slip through the net, they generally follow the same pattern:
Headline. Should, but often doesn’t, include the most important or newsworthy point. Many press release writers waste this opportunity.
Optional second deck. Another chance to miss making the most important point. It can add facts to the headline or expand the scope of the story. A busy editor may not read past this deck, if you haven’t got them by now you can go home.
Opening paragraph. A good press release encapsulates the entire story in the first paragraph. Some do. Half the time it will waste valuable first paragraph words claiming the company is a leader or even a world leader in its field. Nobody cares.
Banal first quote. Almost inevitably the first quote is from the most important person at the company paying for the press release – possibly the person who signs off the public relations invoice. As a rule the first quote is instantly forgetable – most editors will immediately strike a line through it. It will generally be a variation on the theme of “we are so damn clever”, “we worked hard” or “we’re better than everyone else”. Nobody cares.
Optional. Press releases often use the third paragraph to waffle about something of no interest to any sane person.
Facts. If you’re lucky, the next few paragraphs will include facts. Don’t hold your breath.
Quotes. Next come quotes where people are in danger of saying something worthwhile or interesting – note this is also optional. Too often the quote read like they were workshopped by a team and use language no human would speak.
Partners. The press release then moves on to quotes from people who have important business relations with the company paying for the release. They can be interesting, but I wouldn’t bank on it. Most of these comments are bland and meaningless. It’s all about getting your mates into the story even if they don’t deserve a mention.
Important stuff. If the press release is about a product, there may be price and availability details at this point. On the other hand there may not.
Ridiculous big noting. Press releases often end with unrealistically positive paragraphs explaining how the company would like the rest of the world to see it.
At times it feels as if public relations people want their press releases to fail.
Bad press releases are a public relations own goal
“News releases became an anachronism. Online news portals and email killed the underlying functionality of paper releases as a news dissemination tool. The internet delivered news faster, and this was a good thing.”
Andrew says public relations will cease to exist as a profession and as a function.
No big deal, you may think. But Andrew works in marketing and worries press releases and similar communications will come to reflect poorly on the companies paying for these services.
