Comment: Canadian NZME shareholder Jim Grenon might have kicked himself this week when rival Stuff appointed the NZ Herald’s star columnist and provocateur Matthew Hooton to be editor-in-chief of The Post.
A missed opportunity for Grenon, the media insurgent, to have signalled a media upheaval of his own.
Not because Grenon’s own Herald editor-in-chief, Murray Kirkness, is not a highly experienced and impactful newsroom leader.
More because of what Hooton’s appointment by Stuff owner Sinead Boucher instantly says about shaking up the status quo and challenging prevailing media, business and, yes, political orthodoxies.
For Grenon it wouldn’t have had to be Hooton personally, although he was sitting in plain sight on the Herald’s own pages and website. Just someone, something, from right-field.
Hooton is of the right of politics, if a little idiosyncratically. So is Grenon, who has shown an altogether blunter approach in his desire to square up media ‘balance’ – first by backing an alt-media site and newsletter The Centrist then by agitating for change and evidence of editorial balance at the Herald.
It’s a full year now since Grenon took his seat on the NZME board after a three-month campaign to shake up the direction, business performance and editorial coverage of the Herald.
He might well think that so far he hasn’t got a lot to show for his raid, and $30m-plus buy-up of shares that has made him NZME’s biggest shareholder, with just under 20 percent.
During his campaign to throw out the board in 2025, Grenon wrote highly detailed, at-times scathing, assessments of the NZME business: Its high costs, over-inflated corps of high-paid executives, its financial reporting, its strategy over its OneRoof property platform, its mechanisms to ensure balance in its editorial coverage.
Twelve months on, there has not been a lot of visible change in NZME the entity or, importantly, any obvious repositioning of the journalistic ‘balance’ or approach of the flagship New Zealand Herald.
The paper and site have added a regular columnist who used to be at the Free Speech Union. In general coverage, there has been the occasional wonky headline, seemingly trying too hard to inject the kind of ‘balance’ Grenon has sought. Development of a new app announced on Thursday is pretty much business-as-usual.
An editorial advisory board of former political and PR-types has no direct say on content decisions, and prosaic matters such as the volume and prominence of crime and catastrophe in the Herald can divert its attentions.
But the sky has not fallen in on the Herald’s journalism or its relatively even-handed approach to political and social issues.
Business wise, while Grenon’s campaign ended with a new chair and reformed board, the NZME share price is stuck in the middle of its 52-week range. Like all media firms the economic downturn will not have helped this year’s finances.
Its big restructure and cost-cutting rounds occurred before Grenon’s board spill and investors were told at the annual meeting this year that no major cost round was planned in 2026, just constant vigilance. So, no DOGE-like transformation.
The possible sell-down or separation of the OneRoof business was considered and then rejected last year. The highest-profile new Herald product, Herald Now video shows and news, was well underway before Grenon appeared on the scene.
Back now to Hooton. He is being charged by Boucher with shaking things up. His appointment is not a publicity stunt but it succeeds initially with the publicity it has attracted and the symbolism of change.
A non-journalist brought in to drive better journalism; a prominent centre-right name brought in to counter Stuff’s reputation as being left-tinged and to demand other dimensions to The Post and Sunday Star-Times’ coverage.
Stuff itself labelled his appointment a bombshell. The trouble with bombshells is that they sometimes end up causing collateral damage.
Hooton’s lack of experience leading a large group of stroppy and sceptical journalists, dealing with a readership of half a million, of fronting journalism’s unexpected, gnarly legal and ethical challenges, of trudging through the organisational swamp that is HR, IT, finance, marketing and executive meetings could see the shrapnel spread.
Big, bold and unlikely appointments sometimes end spectacularly badly, and relatively quickly.
In media, Mark Weldon at MediaWorks/TV3, shook things up so vigorously that he shook himself out of a job. Bill Ralston in charge of 1News was another, less corrosive but shock jock appointment that didn’t really pan out.
Hooton has a history on the dark side, as a political operative and spin doctor whose presence hovered about in the books The Hollow Men and Dirty Politics, by Nicky Hager (who, without irony, Hooton praised to Stuff staffers on Thursday as one of the best investigative journalists in history).
There’s a chance that some left-of-centre, current Post subscribers could walk away.
For all the risk, his very appointment could move media markets. It’s highly unlikely that the sky will fall in on The Post’s journalism. Institutional values and combined staff talents and experience can soak up short-term volatility.
And the potential upsides?
If nine-tenths of the important Auckland market hadn’t heard of The Post or thepost.co.nz before last Monday, a substantial proportion of them have done so now.
If those who profess a loss of trust in the media see a little flicker of hope in an outsider being given the reins to change whatever it is that has caused that lost trust, that, too, is a gain.
And if Hooton with his restless, unpredictable mind brings energy, and impatience for rigour – so long as it is evidenced by his newsroom applying equal opportunity scrutiny – the profile for The Post and its potential for subscribers could surge.
Up to now, it has developed as a smart, go-to news platform for the political, media and business class, but almost certainly heavily weighted to Wellington, where the paper version of The Post circulates each morning.
In the latest Nielsen online audience figures, given to media firms this week, both Stuff and the Herald have fallen back – to just over 2 million and 1.87m monthly readers nationwide respectively in May. The Herald was down around 6 percent and Stuff has fallen from recent heights up towards 2.4m.
Coming at them is RNZ, now attracting a remarkable 1.67m, with 1News way back in the 700,000s.
Curiously, the Auckland readership of the top three sites is said to be relatively evenly shared. The Herald’s home market is open.
Boucher told Stuff staff at an all-hands newsroom meeting on Thursday morning that Hooton had presented a bold strategy to grow The Post. That online readership in Auckland, and subscription revenues, would surely be a key target.
Which would move Hooton and The Post squarely into Grenon’s territory. From Monday.
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