Joyce called on to smother ‘Grenonade' in bitter board battle at Herald owner

Newsroom

06-05-2025

Comment: The fight to preserve the New Zealand Herald's editorial independence from an agitating Canadian-NZ investor has leapt out of the fire and into the frying pan with the likely appointment of former National minister Steven Joyce to chair its owner NZME.
Joyce, who had played no public role so far in the attempted boardroom coup at NZME in which 10 percent shareholder Jim Grenon wanted to clean house, install himself as chair and actively run NZME like 'an owner operator', is now being nominated by none other than current chair Barbara Chapman's husband as a compromise candidate and her replacement.
NZME told the NZX this morning that Chapman would stand aside after a transition period if Joyce was elected to the board. The incumbent board's latest solution to the crisis forced by Grenon is for Joyce and two existing directors Guy Horrocks and Carol Campbell to form part of the directors' elected. Former MediaWorks' chief executive Sussan Turner remains up for re-election at the meeting. And the NZME board wants to appoint tech and marketplace expert Bowen Pan, who has worked at TradeMe, Facebook and Stripe, to its board post annual meeting.
Grenon, for all his sweeping demands, is likely to end up as one director with perhaps a handpicked colleague, with Joyce overseeing that pairing, incumbents plus another shareholder's nominee.
It is another move backwards for Grenon, the Canadian who wanted to evict all but one of the incumbents and complained NZME's transparency and performance had been severely lacking. He had already been forced by unimpressed influential shareholders to compromise more than once on his proposed board takeover, acquiescing to appointing the chief executive Michael Boggs to the board and dropping or demoting some of the revolutionaries.
While the Herald's journalists and their representative union E Tū might feel they have helped push back against Grenon's chairmanship and board clearout – over fears of his strong rightward social and political views – they now face the rare prospect for New Zealand media of a political partisan being appointed to chair their parent company's board.
Joyce had personal business success building an independent chain of commercial radio stations, which he sold into what became MediaWorks radio. But he has a long record of political success as first National's campaign strategist and then mastermind alongside John Key of three electoral victories. He was economic development and later finance minister, before seeking the party leadership unsuccessfully and then retiring after National had lost power in 2017 to the Winston Peters-Jacinda Ardern deal.
As a politician, Joyce was a dominant figure within National, media-savvy and convinced of the rightness of his thinking.
For an independent news media company – NZME also owns Newstalk ZB, music radio stations, the One Roof real estate site and a chain of regional newspapers – to be led by a former politician is not unprecedented. Former Australian treasurer Peter Costello was chair of Nine Entertainment, the television and newspaper company, before pushing over a News Corporation camera operator at an airport and being forced out.
But in New Zealand it is not a scenario experienced in modern times. (More than a century ago, the Herald appointed as editor William Lane, a former radical union leader and founder of a 'utopian socialist' commune in Paraguay, turned militarist and pusher of eugenics).
The Herald journalists' quest to preserve their independence from board members advancing the interests of themselves, friends or the business over the interests of the public becomes more of a known-known now.
Joyce, who has written columns for the Herald frequently since retiring from politics, would be a more varnished and sophisticated operator than Grenon and his blunt and inelegant demands.
Grenon has backed a news site and newsletter that promoted right wing causes, challenging orthodoxies over the Treaty of Waitangi, the pandemic response, identity politics and climate change. He had been agitating for change to the 'left's' media assets in New Zealand on and off since 2020 and the Covid crisis, with talk at one point of being willing to part with up to $30m to force change in the media landscape.
Joyce carries a career of political partisanship and will have been seen by the existing board as sufficiently centre-right to accommodate the Grenon camp's pressure to move the Herald's 'balance' more towards their worldview.
For Chapman, the realisation that an 'alternative board composition' was needed ahead of the delayed June 3 annual meeting with Joyce taking her seat must have been a blow. She has been the face of a board at times caught in the headlights of Grenon's full press of criticism and condemnation. Already one director, David Gibson, had walked away in the heat of battle. But the NZME statement to the NZX makes clear that Chapman and the board has engineered the possible Joyce solution.
Her husband, shareholder Stephen Donoghue-Cox, lodged the nomination for Joyce.
'The NZME Board believes that the alternative board composition proposal is in the best interests of the company and its shareholders. However, the ability of the current NZME board to implement the alternative board composition proposal will ultimately depend on the outcome of the shareholder voting,' the company statement to the NZX says.
Whether Grenon retains his desired status as a director working actively within the business to turn up the numbers he desires and to 'improve' the Herald's journalism, could now depend on chairman Joyce, who will have his own strong views on what can be done.
A new name among the Grenon board nominees released today alongside lawyer and blogger Philip Crump and investment house director Des Gittings is Henri Eliot, who is notably a professional 'mediator' and Institute of Directors' member.
NZME has already commissioned investment firm Jarden & Co to look at a possible separation and listing for OneRoof. Grenon wants deep cost-cuts, including to senior management, and a stronger focus on 'quality' journalism leading to greater subscriptions. The fate of a strategic investment in video journalism, which is currently underway, could also be in doubt.
Turning around NZME's financial performance – it reported a $16m loss after a writedown for 2024 – in a media market being smothered by ongoing domestic economic stagnation will be a monumental undertaking. Grenon has said in the past he has made good money from investing in 'dying' sectors but believes there could yet be a lucrative tail in the media here.
His campaign for change, which NBR termed a 'Grenonade' has had some successes – it has already seen Gibson go, now Chapman if Joyce is elected, plus the non-replacement of a senior, departing NZME executive member and most lately the re-elevation of the Herald editor to the NZME executive team.
Joyce is putting his reputation on the line. He was one of the ministers who presided over NZ's so-called 'rockstar economy'. NZME needs a promoter, lead singer and set list that will convince New Zealanders it deserves ongoing support.