Changing Nature of News

From The Press on 16 April 2007:

"The EPMU's national secretary, Andrew Little, says New Zealand journalism is "under attack" and that the public should be worried about the quality and breadth of the news and information it can expect to receive. Appropriately, given that prediction, the union chose Black Friday to launch its "OurMedia!" campaign on the steps of APN's corporate headquarters in Auckland. "Irrespective of populist views about journalists," says Little, "we are reliant on good reporting and good broadcasting for understanding of what is happening in our communities and promoting public debate on important issues. This is an issue the wider public needs to understand."

Under APN's outsourcing proposal, for example, news and other copy from the company's provincial papers (including in Whangarei, Tauranga, Hawkes Bay, Rotorua and Wanganui) would be sub-edited, along with that of the Herald and the Listener magazine, by a pool working in what the union predicts will be a "factory-like" set-up somewhere in Auckland's industrial outlands. It is, Little argues, a recipe for mistakes and loss of local colour and distinctiveness, a short-term money saver that long term will inevitably "dumb down" the product and undermine the public's confidence in what they are reading.

"But the key decision-makers are in Australia. They don't have the local connections," he says."

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Website of EPMU, the trade union fighting the sub-editing contracts