Mediawatch: Who calls the shots after change at the top?
Photo:
New Zealand Herald
"NZME's D-Day is finally here" said
a headline
in the New Zealand Herald last Tuesday, before shareholders of its owner NZME settled a bitter battle over its governance.
But in the end, there was no fighting on the beaches.
The existing board and the activist shareholders who wanted to clear it out compromised late last month and endorsed an agreed slate of nominees.
That included the Canadian billionaire who sparked the whole saga, James Grenon. He has lived here for 12 years but had such a low profile only two photos of him appeared in the many media stories about his bid for control.
Grenon had not been heard in public here until last Tuesday's meeting, at which he told shareholders he was virtually "a ghost on Google".
He has only been an NZME shareholder since February when he bought between 9 and 10 percent of the shares. He currently owns a 13 percent stake.
Soon after he
told the board
he wanted to be the chair - and to act like "an owner-operator" and "delve into the operational details so as to be able to challenge management."
This raised eyebrows, given he helped to set up alternative news sites critical of the Herald and other local news media.
In mid-March, the main journalists' trade union E tū called on Grenon to guarantee he would not interfere in NZME editorial decisions.
The Post reporting in NZME's chair speaking out against a bid to oust the current board of the company.
Photo:
Stuff / The Post
NZME's board - on the defensive at that time -
said it was also concerned
that Grenon's takeover bid was an effort for "control over a newsroom, rather than anything else".
More media
eyebrows were raised
when the Free Speech Union confirmed it encouraged billionaire Jim Grenon's investment in the NZME as part of
a campaign to "retake our institutions - one board at a time."
But Grenon insisted his main focus was NZME's financial performance and how it had been represented by the previous board.
His belief that NZME's profitable property platform OneRoof could be a source of greater reward evidently resonated with other shareholders too.
In the end, after some awkward questions to James Grenon on Tuesday, shareholders gave a green light to the governance plan.
Grenon is now on the board led by former radio entrepreneur and government minister Steven Joyce.
So peace in our time at NZME - at least, for now.
But earlier in the day, shots were fired by NZME's main rival in news publishing.
Stuff Group chief executive Sinead Boucher and TradeMe chief executive Anders Skoe.
Photo:
Supplied / TradeMe
Hours before NZME's meeting, Stuff announced TradeMe would take a 50 percent stake in Stuff Digital, the online wing of the company that does not include the newspaper mastheads like The Press, The Post and their websites.
It is an alliance observers expected after Stuff's sole owner Sinead Boucher split the company in two last year - and then divided her single share into one million in February.
What's in this for Trade Me is pretty clear - more eyeballs for stuff that's for sale on its own online marketplace, especially houses.
But what will it do for Stuff and its users? And what is the catch for Stuff?
"We've been doing quite nicely on our own ... [but] it allows us to expand and do more and to keep growing," Sinead Boucher told Mediawatch.
The money that changed hands in the deal - and the terms - were confidential, but "there is a capital injection there that we will use to do all sorts of things," Boucher said.
"We're going to start with rebranding the Stuff Property section and to Trade Me Property and some added features in that. Trade Me has all the data and expertise and insights. We'll be following not too long after that with motoring. Let's see what comes after that."
The 50-50 split of Stuff Digital will be run by a board of two members of the Stuff Group, and two from Trade Me including chief executive Anders Skoe.
"I will be the chair and I have the casting vote on that board," Boucher said.
But Trade Me is much bigger than Stuff. What if they want more bang for the undisclosed bucks they're now investing?
"Those scenarios have come up and just been discussed in all we've gone through the last few months to make sure that both sides are perfectly comfortable."
Would Trade Me allow Stuff to sell part of its stake to another party? Or seek or accept investment from another?
"You're touching on what would be the confidential terms of the deal, so I can't really comment on that in any detail," Boucher said.
During the NZME boardroom battle, it also emerged that NZME had approached Stuff about acquiring its mastheads.
When asked at the shareholders' meeting on Tuesday, NZME chief executive Michael Boggs said he was still interested in acquiring Stuff's mastheads.
"He has my number, but I've got my own things going on at the moment. I'm not intending to do anything with that business at this stage," Boucher said.
What NZME's new leaders decide to do will also move the media industry - and public life.
It owns the Herald and other weekly, daily and community papers, and the Herald's news website and app have a huge national audience and more than 150,000 subscribers.
NZME also has half the country's radio networks, including the country's top-rating talk radio station Newstalk ZB.
On top of all that - and maybe worth more on its own - is NZME's OneRoof, which posted a 50 percent leap in revenue last year.
The outgoing board was already looking at splitting it off with separate governance and management, or even selling it.
Property content platforms can be goldmines for media companies.
Stuff's former Australian owner Fairfax Media created Domain to cater for the A$7 billion a year real estate market. It's just been sold for A$2.8b to US property firm Costar by current owner Nine Entertainment - the same company that offloaded Stuff to Boucher for one symbolic dollar five years ago.
NZME will be anxious about Stuff's Trade Me property joint venture eating OneRoof's lunch.
"We are now dealing with an integrated media enemy," one of the shareholders said at the NZME meeting last Tuesday.
For years, Stuff has looked for ways to bring in money - broadband, electricity and even noodle night markets. When Warner Brothers Discovery closed Newshub last year, Stuff struck a multi-million dollar deal to produce ThreeNews.
Is property content now the future for funding news?
"It reflects the position it holds in people's lives and how important all things about property - buying, selling, saving, mortgage rates - all of those things perform well on our site," Boucher said.
"With Trade Me being number one in that area I think we will end up producing a more useful, more relevant product for our audiences."
"Before bringing someone in or selling part of part of the business ... you have to be on the same page around the sanctity of editorial independence," Boucher said.
"The business continues to run operationally independently, and Trade Me is very happily in support of our editorial independence. They will have absolutely no say on the content that goes on the site."
"I fielded one call from someone who wanted to buy one of our local papers. They wanted to change the mayor of the town. Some wanted to buy a whole media company for the power of influence on the public agenda."
Concerns that the new board at NZME will seek to change editorial practice have been a sticking point ever since Grenon raised them in his initial bid to be chair.
Grenon's final written notes for shareholders to ponder included the claim that AI could be deployed to track political bias in NZ Herald journalism.
"Things were drifting downhill from my perspective ... particularly in the editorial front," Grenon said Tuesday's meeting.
"I thought, well, maybe I can sort of jump-start something here. And I'm very, very delighted with the way it seems to have worked out."
Another shareholder (also coincidentally from Canada) urged Grenon to "inject more balance" on climate change to NZME journalism.
"Ultimately, there's very few businesses that you really can try to look over the shoulders of your staff as they're performing the business. I don't know that writing is a heck of a lot different than that," Grenon replied.
"But you can have general guidelines, and you can also score after the fact and see how you're doing at meeting these guidelines. If they aren't meeting the guidelines, you can sort of nudge them in the right directions."
"Maybe I would like to see more clear score-keeping than has been going on, although perhaps my eyes will be opened when I get on the inside," he added.
An editorial advisory board will be established by the new regime.
One of the members will be lawyer Philip Crump, who previously blogged and broke the odd story under the pseudonym Thomas Cranmer - an archbishop of Canterbury executed for heresy.
It is not Crump's first gig at NZME.
In mid-2023, he was appointed as editor of ZB Plus, billed as "a go-to platform for news and commentary" for paying subscribers.
ZB Plus was off the ZB site months later - but his is the only media company experience among James Grenon's candidates.
"Having worked in the same newsroom as Philip Crump, we do not believe he has the experience, ability, or mana to take on what would be an influential role," E tū's union representative Isaac Davison - also a senior Herald reporter - said
in a letter to Grenon
in mid-April.
Philip Crump has claimed journalists should welcome many of their new ideas for NZME, such as restoring the NZ Herald's editor to NZME's executive leadership team.
On his Substack, he published
Six Challenges Undermining Media Trust
"Addressing these issues requires not just critique but actionable reform," he wrote, but he has declined to be interviewed for Mediawatch about this until later this month.
Former Herald editor Gavin Ellis reckoned the new chair Steven Joyce would be aware of the danger of editorial overreach.
"The board has an important role, but the board also shouldn't be making individual decisions about individual items ... in the general course of events anyway," Steven Joyce said on Tuesday.
"(Editorial advisory boards) are quite common internationally. It's an opportunity to debate and support the development of editorial policy. In every business, we can get very, very busy day to day - and journalism is one of those businesses - so it's that opportunity to test that thinking independently."
"I can assure you that the board's view will be ... to try and enhance and strengthen the editorial offering of NZME - and not do anything else."
Media Minister Paul Goldsmith appointed Philip Crump to the NZ On Air board recently.
This week the minister
told Newsroom
he would take advice managing the conflict of interest arising from oversight of public funding for journalism.
When Newsroom asked the minister if Crump could recuse himself from funding decisions he replied: "Anything related directly to journalism would be an obvious place to start."
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