MediaRoom column: Can a new local news service, launching in Wellington today, succeed where plenty of others have failed? Mark Jennings reports.
Trying to provide Wellingtonians with local news coverage has broken plenty of publishers. The Evening Post, Capital Times, City Voice, and The Wellingtonian all had varying degrees of success but ultimately failed or were subsumed by rival publications. A lack of sufficient advertising revenue a common factor in their demise.
But when a gap stays unfilled for long enough someone will always chance their arm. The latest to give it a go are Wellington ad man Antony Young and media entrepreneur, Gaurav Sharma. The latter not to be confused with former Labour MP and candidate for Hamilton West of the same name.
Their Capital NZ newsletter will go out two days a week – Tuesday and Friday – with the aim of being a daily next year. Young describes it as a “digital newspaper” that will land in people's inboxes early morning.
“It will be a good five-minute fix of Wellington news and we will curate local news from other media outlets with links to those publications,” says Young.
Young, who is a partner in Wellington-based advertising agency, Media Lab, says the capital is different to other New Zealand cities and the people who live in Wellington think about news differently to those in say, Auckland.
“There are parallels between Wellington and San Francisco; I spent a lot of time in San Francisco and what I found is that the people who lived and worked there did so because they didn’t want to live in LA. Therefore, you had some smart, successful people that created a good vibe and Wellington has that ... we choose to live and work in Wellington because we want to. We have a different personality and culture and having a paper that reflects on that and reports on that … there is room for it.”
But are Wellingtonians that different to Aucklanders?
“Auckland is a more commercial city, there’s more immigrants, it’s a big sprawling city with its own issues and challenges and a little disconnected from Wellington. People in Wellington are less transient and more committed to the city. It is a city of 400,000 people and I think there is room for more than one paper covering the city.”
Of course, Capital NZ is not a paper in the traditional sense. Describing it that way seems like a marketing ploy more than an accurate description.
“Is it correct to call it a digital newspaper? Well, I see it in the same way Netflix calls itself a TV company. We are certainly not a traditional newspaper ... the sentiment and the content people get from it is similar, but it is a reinvented version ... There are a couple models that have emerged in North America that we like, and think can work here,” says Young.
Wellington’s daily newspaper, The Dominion Post, is unlikely to see Capital NZ as any sort of threat but Dr James Hollings, Head of Journalism at Massey University, and former Evening Post reporter, senses there is a gap in the market for local news.
“To be honest since the death of The Wellingtonian there has been a bit of a news desert here in central Wellington. There is an opportunity and it is a bit surprising that no one has attempted to take it before now.
“Hyper local news is creating a big buzz around the world and in Wellington we have a very educated, highly engaged audience. I think there is a real market for fine-grain local news.”
Capital NZ’s editor, Gaurav Sharma, started his career as a journalist in India with The Indian Express. He was behind several small start-ups when he moved to New Zealand in 2014, including the Migrant Times and Multicultural Times.
Young says: “I think having an outsider perspective will be interesting. When I was in London the editor of the FT was American and when I went to the US the editor of American Vogue was British.
“We are building a team of three or four staff reporters and a network of freelance reporters. We have got some old hacks, that’s how they describe themselves, but we have been overwhelmed by some experienced journos saying we will write for you.”
Young accepts the economics are challenging given the amount of advertising dollars now going to digital giants Facebook and Google.
“I have been one of the people that have moved ad budgets out of traditional media to digital, so I am probably more aware of the challenges that we are going to face.
“Our market is local companies and I think there is a bit of pushback on Facebook and advertising on Facebook. Facebook and Google have never produced a single bit of local news about Wellington, so I don’t think we should be really worried about them.
“Others [previous local news operations] ran out of sufficient advertising and the cost of producing a paper and the price of newsprint kept going up ... now people read on their phones, so it is different for us.
“Initially, we are going to fund it personally - we think it will take 18 months to two years before it funds itself ... we are bootstrapping; we don’t have a sugar daddy funding us so we will need to be prudent.”
“In the last six years at Media Lab I’ve probably worked with 200 to 250 different companies that are Wellington-based so that has given me a perspective on what those companies are looking for.”
Massey University’s Hollings says Young and Sharma will need to stay focused on the content offering to have a chance of success.
“They will need to get really serious about the news. Wellingtonians are very educated and engaged audience, they won’t swallow someone just trying to sell advertising. “
