Jeff Latch, Head of TVOne and TV2,

Andy Shaw, GM, Acquisitions, Production and Commissioning.

Dear Kevin, Andy and Jeff,

It’s been two weeks now since your baby “Seven Sharp” hit our screens and there’s a lot of people who feel they have a lot to say about it. And no wonder!

But it’s not the programme I’m writing to you about but your part in it.

Is it true that all of you were involved in every aspect of the programme from inception, including deciding which stories went where in the first week? I’m wondering what “Seven Sharp’s” Executive Producer, Raewyn Rasch had to say about that? I hope plenty, but I’m guessing not a lot.

Was it easy to breach the divide between sales and marketing (isn’t that what you guys do after all?) and start making editorial decisions, given that SS (now that’s got a ring to it!) didn’t know what it was or where it was going?

Now you’ve crossed that Rubicon – and started dabbling in making news decisions (it’ll be good for you Jeff, you’ll be able to add news producer onto your Skill Set on Linkedin… at the moment you only have strategic partnerships and content acquisition), will you be the guys to fall on your swords when the programme is quietly re-launched later in the year (go on! Don’t tell me that’s not going to happen… )?

Kevin, I know phones and television are very similar but you’ve only had to deal with handset products and prices up until now.  Still it’s good to see you are taking your Editor-in-Chief title so seriously… a bit like Captain Mainwaring when he joined the home-guard.

And the ratings! Well, ratings, schmatings who cares about those?  I know, I know, there was a big hue and cry when “Campbell Live” beat you in age 5 plus for the first time since it went to air in 2005 but it was a one-off, right? And who cares about 5 plus anyway? Only the bloody newspapers and what would they know? Oh, Campbell beat SS in all the younger age demographics, too. Weren’t those the ones you were aiming to win?

Its interesting to see though that “Seven Sharp” and “Campbell Live” is now getting neck and neck in that decried 5 plus demographic with Campbell gaining 1 % and “Seven Sharp” losing about 3%, with Prime”s “The Crowd Goes Wild” picking up viewers.

Kevin, if there’s one thing you need to know its networks don’t need to give viewers any excuse to shop around – and it looks like “Seven Sharp” is doing that in spades.

But hey, why don’t you have a chat with that nice new Programmer from Channel Nine you’ve hired in on contract?  Apparently they think the programme is past redemption.

And if it is, we know that it won’t be you who’ll take the rap.

Your favourite former telly gal,

Janet

As a communicator David Shearer has been constantly assailed by commentators, myself included, for a severe lack of coherence in his speech. He ‘self-edits’ what he is saying and as a result continually changes the words he is uttering, like an old typewriter going back and crossing out a word and substituting another, before repeating the process yet again.
Because of this his speech is halting, the meaning often lost in a barrage of verbal rewrites, and he appears halting and unsure of himself.
Shearer needs the confidence to trust what he is about to say instead of second and third guessing himself. My guess is he is getting so much advice about what to and what not to say that he has a cacophony of contradictory small voices in his head during an interview that he cannot satisfactorily blot out.
That said, he has of late sounded more sure of himself, more confident. My guess is that this is a man who needs to get angry more often. The angrier he gets the more clarity he achieves because when the adrenalin is pumping the little voices with their kind but confusing advice are downed out.
His overall tone is one of reasoned reasonableness. Shearer’s presentation in stump speeches is not bad, although his manner, such as at the weekend conference, still can appear a little contrived. Yet, when he overcomes the self-editing process, he comes across as honest and as someone who genuinely believes what he is saying.
Shearer appears to be at his best in one-on-one situations, face to face with people, talking and persuading them with his considerable personal charm.
By contrast, David Cunliffe is generally seen as smooth, articulate and polished. In interviews and speeches he picks his words carefully and for effect. He sounds every inch the politician even if, at times, he also can sound arrogant and superciliously evasive under close questioning. To be frank, actually, Cunliffe does have the added disadvantage of a somewhat patronising tone in his voice on almost every occasion.
If there is a clear contrast between the two it is my impression that Shearer, for all his faults, sounds genuine and real while Cunliffe, for all his gloss, comes across as artificial and fake.
Shearer’s strength, as was John Key’s in 2008, is that he does not look or act like a politician. This promotes trust with those non-partisan voters who, presumably, are the ones most likely to be persuaded to vote for him.
My old friend Dr Brian Edwards has branded David Shearer “untrainable” and, I suspect, he is right. The answer then is not to try and train him into being something he is not.
With someone like Shearer the best that can be done is help him be himself, accentuate those characteristics and personality traits that are his strengths, and help him articulate simple, clear messages for public consumption.
David Shearer does need to use more forceful language, to be more categorical in his speech, and express himself clearly and concisely. More over, he needs to smile and appear confident any time he appears on camera. At times recently he has looked hunted and wary. Then again, he is being hunted and is rightfully wary but, for God’s sake, don’t show it.
Note that here I have not dwelt on the content of what either man says, I’m not talking about their respective ideologies, I’m talking about how they express themselves and how they are probably perceived by the public.
My personal opinion is that, given time, David Shearer can develop into a much better communicator than he is at present.
He has the advantage of already appearing a decent, honest, reasonable man. However, he needs to overcome the disadvantages of appearing unsure, uncomfortable, and unconfident.
If he can project himself, through his speech patterns and overall demeanour, in a clearer and more dynamic fashion while retaining the image of being a normal bloke, rather than a nakedly political critter, then by 2014 Labour may have a leader that could give John Key a run for his money.

The three-part nightly current affairs format is more than 23 years old, dating back to Paul Holmes launching it in 1989. Throughout those years its popularity waxed and waned.
A low ratings phase was usually turned around by an infusion of new production staff, stronger editorial content and fresh journalism that meant the programme broke stories.
The classic format for this type of show is incisive interviews with the newsmakers of the day, tough investigative stories that told people things that they didn’t know already, powerful human interest stories and being first with the “gets” – seeing and hearing people in the news before any other media interviewed them.
The idea is to be the subject of “water cooler” chat the next day, making the show a “must see, must not miss”.
Over the last few years, I believe, Close Up drifted from that winning formula. If it was tired it was because making a daily current affairs show is tiring, it is the Russian Front of television journalism, it’s exhausting and debilitating if you do it for too long.
Nightly current affairs requires a constant turnover of reporters and producers, feeding fresh reinforcements into the programme as longer serving staff reach the end of their endurance.
TVNZ’s claim that the days of the three-part nightly current affairs show is over ignores the fact that A Current Affair on the Nine Network and Today Tonight Channel 7 still pull big audiences in Australia.
What is killing Close Up is its audience. The change is being driven by its marketers. Close Up may have twice the audience of its rival Campbell Live on TV3 but it’s the wrong kind of audience.
Close Up viewers tend to be aged over 50 yrs old, the majority live outside Auckland and there are not a lot of Household Shoppers viewing it.
TV ONE fears its audience is literally dying. Advertisers don’t like older viewers, they think they can pitch their products better to younger viewers. Advertisers like Auckland viewers because that city is where the money is. Advertisers love Household Shoppers because they spend the money.
TV ONE wants a 7pm show that will attract this new audience because they can sell more expensive ads and make more money.
While TVNZ isn’t saying what kind of programme it will put in the 7pm slot next year my long experience with the half-witted reasoning of TVNZ’s top management suggests it will be lighter, fluffier, magazine style. Think Breakfast at 7pm.
Then again, another format suggestion involves sending in the clowns. TVNZ’s Head of News and Current Affairs Ross Dagan apparently helped set up The Project on Channel 10 in Australia. It is a news and current affairs show fronted by comedians. No, I’m not joking, comedians.
TV ONE’s strategy is fatally flawed. It’s targeting younger people, women, household shoppers and Aucklanders. At 7pm these people are either watching Shortland Street on TV2, having dinner, gone to the gym, out on the turps or glued to their computer.
All the new show will do is ensure a large clump of former Close Up viewers migrate to Campbell Live on TV3, which is good news for John.
I have the feeling the new 7pm show will be lucky to last a year on screen and then the gleeful marketers and programmers will be able to run a game show or soap instead.
TVNZ has a vertically anally/nasally integrated management structure and Mr Dagan is too far down the bottom of the executive ladder to have any effect on the marketers and programmers who sit at the top.
In my experience TVNZ upper management don’t like News. They don’t watch it, don’t understand it and they don’t want it cluttering up their airwaves. It chews up too many resources, its expensive, and they distrust it because it risks being an intelligent product at times.
What worries me most is that Close Up’s problem with “the wrong kind of audience” is shared by ONE News and Sunday. TVNZ management have already slashed the hour long Sunday to 30 minutes so as to accommodate a talent quest. How long before it disappears off the screen altogether?
They’re already inserting fake news style infomercials into the 6pm news advertising breaks, damaging the credibility of their flagship programme.
I’d be the first to admit even news and current affairs needs to be a commercial product to attract audiences and generate revenue. But TVNZ is headed in completely the wrong direction.
What’s worse is that programmes likely a nightly current affairs show can perform a valuable function in a democracy, holding politicians and newsmakers to account, exposing stories that others don’t wish us to know, and providing genuine insight into what is happening around us.
We are about to lose that, on TVNZ at least.

Armstrong was responding to their criticism that Kiwi journalists did little analysis of key Apec issues such as the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP).

“Get off our backs,” Armstrong virtually yelled, “Stop behaving like a pair of tut-tutting old dowagers gossiping in the salons. In short, stop making blinkered, cheap-shot accusations of the kind you made this week.”

Cue; stage left and right the Old(er) and New(er) members of the commentariat, lining up for the verbal equivalent of a bare-knuckled bash.

The Herald’s Fran O’Sullivan, never one to step back from a bit of push n’ shove, took to Facebook to denounce Edwards. “What started out as a useful round-up on NZ politics has morphed into a pinko slant on political news issues, published by NZ Herald and NBR,” she huffed. Other MSM journos sided with Armstrong, while Cameron Slater, ever the opportunist, campaigned to start his own political round-up that he claimed, ahem, to “provide more balance.” Yeah right.

Then, the bloggers waded in with equal fury.  Mike Smith at The Standard and Danyl Mclauchlan from “The Dim-Post”, not to forget Russell Brown on Public Address and, even though he’s paid by TVNZ these days, young fogey Damian Christie flew into print, again on Public Address, with “Bloggers: Pr*cks, Ars*holes,B*st*rds and C*nts”.  All denounced Armstrong, with Christie informing Armstrong that ‘having a bitch about bloggers criticizing your work is like a dinosaur sitting in a swamp whinging about the oncoming meteorite.”

For their part, both Campbell and Bryce’s response to Amstrong’s on-slaught was completely polarized.

Campbell, sounding like a hurt little schoolboy, blogged with a line-by-line refutation of Armstrong’s rant.  Talk about feeding the flames and creating more heat than light.

Edwards’s response was interesting. To date, he has inventoried the fight in his political round-up twice, noting that “Armstrong’s column does raise some important points about the relationship between the mainstream media and new media. For instance, how does online political commentary complement the work of political journalists, or is it simply parasitical?” He then diplomatically said that he was not accusing the press gallery reporters at APEC of being lazy.

The point is this; outside the Beltway nobody cares about the Old and New Media, much less the dust-up they appear to be having. Today all of us are commentators with the ability to stand on multiple soap-boxes and warble to our hearts content.

If journalism is going to remain relevant it needs to be more disciplined than this.

In the middle of the inconsequential this week, the losers were those who still wish to be informed and don’t care where good information comes from.

The winners were the politicians.

But if you read those in the know (e.g. those who have worked or are working in Fairfax’s newsrooms) Fairfax Australia’s problems began well before Big Bad Gina, the shoot-‘em-up-miner, lumbered into view.

And it’s a salutary lesson in the pious pursuit of Serious Journalism.

Miranda Devine, writing in The Daily Telegraph yesterday (I know, I know, you haven’t got a link; I’m such a god-damned luddite, go find it) inventories how “The Sydney Morning Herald’s” journalists became disenfranchised from their newspapers readership.

As a columnist at the SMH for ten years, Devine says she was brought in to “reflect the values of its small conservative readership.”

She says there was a group of journalists in the newsroom called  “the collective” who were not household names.  “They rarely had bylines because they did very little of what you might call journalism. They were too busy policing what the real journalists did.”

She says their tactics included bombarding her computer screen with poison messages at deadline or getting friends to lodge complaints about her work.

Former Editor-in-Chief Alan Revell believed that “they saw themselves as ‘the keepers of the flame’.”

Looks like that flame in the newsroom is about to immolate its inhabitants.

This week the publisher and editor in chief of the SMH along with its first female editor (and the editor of the Age) resigned. All said they weren’t resigning because of the drastic reorganisation of Fairfax but, basically, because it was time to go.

It sounds like a few in the newsroom of the SMH would do well to follow their lead.

The lesson is that newspapers exist in a commercial environment, they must adapt or die, and that adaptation includes taking a more popular approach to the news they produce. “Popular” meaning stories that their readership can relate to and want to read – not sermons from the Mount or lessons in someone else’s ideology.

As an aside, the NZ Herald, for all its sins is taking that more populist approach and reaping the benefits in increased circulation and readership. Curiously, around 51% of Herald sales are now newsstand, not subscription. If you’re wondering why the glaring “goody boxes”, whizz bang headlines, and saturation front page Scott Guy murder trial coverage – it’s because the Herald now knows its billboard and front page have to sell the paper to passersby if it is to survive.

Alan Rusbridger, the E-in-C of the Guardian thinks Fairfax’s  draconian moves, announced last week, could be a sign the publisher has pushed the panic button.

God knows, Rusbridger has issues of his own.

As technology imperils every media business “The Guardian” hemorrhages more money than most. And, last week, philosopher and author Alain de Botton, argued “The Guardian” would be better to replace Rusbridger with “The Sun’s” editor Dominic Mohan.

“This is not a case of bad quality selling and good quality not,” de Botton argued. “It is about “The Guardian” resting on the laurels of its seriousness and using this as an excuse not to be commercial.  “The Guardian” is simply dull and their dullness is a sign they haven’t done their job well.  It is lazy and “The Sun” is not.”

“What “The Guardian” needs is the focus of “The Sun”,” he said.

In making those comments, de Botton has neatly summarized the issues facing media outlets here.

“Morning Report” and the late TVNZ7 please take note….

In such cases the media can be so thin-skinned as to be transparent.

The NZ Herald and Dominion Post/Fairfax became positively hysterical this week when Prime Minister John Key voiced his opinion of them on Leighton Smith’s Newstalk ZB programme.

He suggested, “The media are in a more aggressive and hostile mood towards us [National], I am not bent out of shape about that, I expected that.”

The Herald headlined its resulting story as an “attack” by Key. Fairfax’s Stuff.co.nz for a while ran a picture of Key headlined with the words “Poor me.” Words he never used and meanings that he specifically ruled out in the substance of the interview.

Talking of increased media criticism of his government Key said, “I don’t mean that as a complaint, I’m not moaning about it, it’s just a statement of fact.”

Fairfax’s Vernon Small ran a story headlined “Key bemoans ‘hostile’ media.”

Didn’t he actually say, “I’m not moaning about it”? Yes, actually, he did.

In both cases of apparently wilfully misrepresenting what he said, it almost seemed like the Herald and Fairfax were determined to prove John Key’s point for him.

The thrust of what John Key said on ZB was that, after a long honeymoon in the first term, the media were becoming more antagonistic in the second term and, if he won a third, it would increase. “History shows you it’s even more aggressive,” he stated.

Hardly an “attack” or even a “criticism”, let alone an example of “Key slamming the media”, as the Herald subsequently wrote.

Key ventured his opinion that the Herald was becoming more tabloid in format and content to boost sales, describing the Herald front page as “a pretty sensational sort of front page and that’s a deliberate strategy to get more sales at the dairy.”

The Herald’s Editor in Chief, Tim Murphy, tweeted later that day, “More sensational ‘so-called investigative journalism’ coming to your broadsheet Herald Wed. Good yarn. Might even inspire a purchase at the dairy…”

That comment made it difficult not to believe there was some malice in Wednesday’s enormous front-page story, “Minister’s high life”, subtitled “We’re paying for flash hotels … and laundry.”

The story revealed that cabinet ministers Murray McCully, Tim Groser and Jonathan Coleman, when travelling, were getting their underpants, socks and shirts washed at public expense. Shock! Horror!

Strangely enough, in the past, I’ve travelled overseas with Herald journalists and I’ve noticed their employer appeared to be paying their laundry bill. Perhaps the Herald will now set an example by not paying for its staff’s laundry bills when abroad and the government will follow suit.

Although the spectre of Murray McCully or Coleman washing their smalls in their hotel room hand basins is too awful to behold.

McCully and Groser were taken to task for running up travel bills and staying in expensive hotels. They are the Minister of Foreign Affairs and the Minister for Trade. They have to travel. It’s part of their jobs. They end up staying in expensive hotels because that is usually where the talks are being held and the other delegations are staying. What are they supposed to do? Check out and stay in a backpackers?

This week McCully goes to North America for a series of international meetings and Groser is off to Washington DC for a conference. Both should cancel their meetings, stay home, and do everything by Skype. It would be much cheaper. FFS!

Wednesday’s Herald front page was a classic “Gotcha!” story and a superb illustration of the sensationalism practiced recently by the paper. His comments were no more an “attack” than what Dr Brian Edwards and I have been saying on the media panel on TV3’s The Nation on Sunday mornings over the past couple of weeks.

To reassure the Herald’s Shane Currie and Tim murphy, and the delicate flowers at Fairfax, I am not “attacking” or “slamming” them. Like Key, I’m just stating facts.

The media’s role is often to be “hostile, aggressive and antagonistic” to governments and politicians when they merit it. That comes with the job of being the “Fourth Estate”. I was once so hostile, aggressive and antagonistic” that Prime Minister Jim Bolger banned me from his press conferences.

It is the media’s job to apply scrutiny, to critique, and to commentate on events and individuals. It is just a shame that it cannot stand it when others do the same to them.

Message to Media: Stop being so pathetically thin-skinned and get on with the job.

I’m not going to descend into another Grade 10 grovel (it’s unseemly) and yes, there has been a bit going on since the last post. Not the least of which was TVNZ’s appearance in front of the Commerce Select Committee at the beginning of the month.

This is an annual flogging for TVNZ’s executives – after all, they’re the SOE everyone loves to hate.

This time round, though, it shone a light on the balance of power between the sixth and seventh floors and News and Current Affairs at the state broadcaster. It seems the latter is losing the editorial war over the formers commercial imperatives.

There’s been a lot of huffing and puffing in blogs and on websites about Labour’s broadcasting spokeswoman Clare Curran’s accusations that TVNZ’s Head of Programming instructed reporters and other staff at “Fair Go” to instruct them not to produce programmes that would upset advertisers.

TV One and TV2 boss Jeff Latch was called to the meeting too, apparently (as Elaine from “Seinfeld” once famously said about a former boyfriend, “He’s a little, little man”) to impart his editorial wisdom as well.

I’m sure the long-suffering “Fair Go” staff responded to Latch’s exhortations for them to use “balance” in their stories (surely, that wasn’t code for “don’t scare the advertisers off”?) with a nodding acceptance.  After all, Latch and Co are their bosses.

I hope they would’ve gone away, yelled, screamed, threatened rebellion.  Oh, that’s right, they did – hence Latch’s justified humiliation at the Commerce Select Committee.

This shoddy little episode is further proof of News and Current Affairs being knobbled under CEO Rick Ellis’s stewardship.

Yes, the State broadcaster has posted a $19.2 million half-year profit up from last year’s $4.9 million.  As an aside, last year’s much smaller result wasn’t as a result of poor advertising revenue (although I bet TVNZ sales will claim that) but because of the company’s $14.8 million write-off of its stake in the TiVo set box-tops, another spectacular fail.

And with Ellis’ departure (and old mate Kevin Kendrick, formerly from Telecom, tipped to take over) along with several other news department paper-shufflers, News and Current Affairs is presently at the bottom of the downward swing.

How else can you explain why they decided to let Political Editor Guyon Espiner go? His departure to TV 3 is a prime example of the arrogance that seeps through the place.

TVNZ’s News and Current Affairs Department has more talent per square metre than anywhere else.

The trouble is, once you enter the Belly of the Beast that talent is never acknowledged or nurtured.

The result is that the place burns through more talent than a series of “American Idol”.  That’s what you get when management knows the price of everything – and the value of nothing.

Other bloggers have taken to their sites to express their fury at this. And while I don’t blame them, this time round I’m not joining the fray.

Why? Because a period of enforced recuperation has allowed me the luxury of reconnecting with A Great Love, one that almost became a career – food and cooking.  These days it’s a love that has to satisfy itself with the eye candy of the Food Channel.

And while I wrote a column for “Cuisine” magazine last year lambasting the telly fashion for food-as-competition shows, in the spirit of accentuate-the-positive-delineate-the-negative that has heralded the start of 2012, here’s my choice of absolute faves that take pride of place on my MySky.

Luke Nguyen’s Vietnam

As much a cooking show, as it is a travelogue, Nguyen introduces us to everyone in his home country, from his grandmother to the lady cooking street-food in Hanoi.  It’s the show to watch if you’ve never been to Vietnam but want to go, if you’ve been but want to go back and, most importantly, if you want to learn to cook Vietnamese.  A lush, visual, sensual splendour.

Nigel Slater’s Simple Suppers

Yes, Nigel style is depressing, yes, his flat delivery drives me crazy at times (it’s not quite as bad as Rick Stein’s nasal whine but its getting up there) BUT this is a beautifully directed show, which transmits Slater’s passion for food. It uses clever visual techniques to introduce and shape the programme, allowing the recipes to take centre stage.  Slater’s food philosophy is true to the programme’s title. His food is easy to follow tasty-takes on classic ideas.

Raymond Blanc’s Kitchen Secrets

A show that’s unashamedly one to watch if you’re a foodie’s foodie.  This show doesn’t muck around with false concepts of “competition” to keep your attention. It assumes you want to watch the art of haute cuisine being demonstrated by a master chef who can still give his apprentices the rounds of the kitchen.

Again, well produced and shot (the British are so much better at food shows than Americans), its style is a mix of plain old-fashioned cooking demonstration interspersed with voiced-over instructions.

If you’re the type of cook who bought Julia Child’s “Mastering the Art of French Cooking, Volumes One and Two”, this is the programme for you.

It’s one to watch, also, because it challenges and cajoles you back into the kitchen.  And that’s never a bad thing.

Anthony Bourdain’s No Reservations

Ok, this isn’t so much a cooking show as an eating-and-travel show but if you’re as much a greedy cow as I am (hey they didn’t call me “Gannet” for nothing…), this programme can take you to some of the most fascinating places, with cuisines that run the gamut from “A” for amazing to “B” for barfing.

Bourdain’s rock n’ roll style is complemented by his commentary, that sometimes contains more beeps than anything else.

Nigella Lawson – All & Any of Her Shows

I know what you’re going to say.  How can I include a woman whose skills in the kitchen are highlighted by her ability to flirt down-the-barrel and eat quantities of grub in the most sexual way?

Lawson’s a cook, not a chef, but what she does do well is demystify food, making it accessible for those who can’t cook/won’t cook.  I love the way she show cases “Ham in Coca-Cola” one minute (that gets the anti-obesity brigade frothing no doubt) alongside Temple Food such as “Vietnamese Chicken and Mint Salad”.

Al Brown – Various Shows

What’s not to like about this quintessential Kiwi bloke?  Brown’s been able to pole-vault from his days as Head Chef at Wellington’s swanky award-winning “Logan Brown” to a variety of telly programmes promoting his straight forward eats, shoots & leaves  food philosophy. Its about time we saw a bit of ourselves mirrored on our screens.

Ok, time for your thoughts now during these lazy, hazy days of summer.  Let’s start a conversation, folks, not a rant.

Play nicely, people!!

The lists, the bests and worsts of the year, have started to sprout like rare end-of-year funghi.  If you can’t beat ‘em, I say…..

Best News Story

Christchurch Earthquake 1, 2, 3, 4 …

In a country where annually news is thin on the ground, both channels share the honour of Best TV News cover of the quakes, even if 3 News had the by far the most extensive video on February’s killer quake (if only because ONE News’ building was virtually destroyed and its equipment largely lost or inaccessible in the wreckage).

Best TV reporter in the February quake has to be TV3’s Hamish Clark, anyone who saw his superb walkabout in the immediate aftermath, capturing the terror of the immediate aftershocks and running vox-pops with stunned survivors as buildings continued to crumble onto the street, got as close as you could to the disaster without actually being there, cowering or stumbling for your life.

Best camera coverage of the February disaster, all the news crews who got out on the streets, shot whatever they could, edited in the camera and filed some much of their field footage live to air.

Best newspaper coverage of the quakes, the Christchurch Press which never missed a day in print, despite its building being largely destroyed and its staff injured or shocked – even if the state of the streets made home delivery a forlorn hope.

Stuff.co.nz and herald.co.nz came into their own as rolling, quickly updated, news sources with excellent video and stills people were seeking so that they could try and comprehend what had happened.

A Breaking News Award to the citizen journalists of Twitter who beat every form of media for getting information, news and rumour out within seconds of every shake and all developments in the city.

Worst News Coverage goes to the dickheads – you know who you are – from both home and abroad who breached the CBD red zone trying to gain a “scoop” – and were promptly arrested.

Best Election coverage (on the campaign and on the night)

3 News takes the title for the campaign TV coverage, even if it was grossly sensationalist over the “teacupgate” – which proved to be a storm in one.

Patrick Gower’s superb baiting of Don Brash should feature in Journalism 101 courses for years to come – even if his story did, in fact, prove Brash’s point that Paddy was a “deceitful bastard”.

TV3 again takes the title for Best coverage on the night if only because its graphics were better, its panel smaller and saner, and it didn’t cutaway at vital moments to comments and events that were irrelevant.

The Royal NZ Herald wins best newspaper coverage of the campaign, it remained uncharacteristically extremely challenging to the National Party incumbents and Claire Trevett’s “fly on the wall” coverage of the leaders out on the trail was unfailingly funny and insightful.

The Dominion Post gets a highly commended for its use of Vernon Small’s well-trained eye on the leaders but, somehow, we were left feeling he was underused.
No newspaper gets an award for election night coverage as this came the next day in the Sunday papers and, as we all know, the Sundays are complete crap.

The Best News Website Coverage was undoubtedly Scoop, which seems to pride itself on “being there” and “being first” – old news values serving new media well.

Worst Election News Coverage had to be The Standard whose hard left rhetoric rendered it blind to any rational coverage.

Labour’s Red Alert was a much better and clearer standard bearer for the left and while right wing sites such as Whaleoil were almost as blinkered as The Standard, the blubbery one saved himself – just -by the liberal use of humour.

Then there’s The Worst Awards….Teacupgate, as mentioned, and the “accidental” (yeah, right) taping of the conversation between Prime Minister John Key and Act’s John Banks.

No-one came out of this silly debacle with any honour, least of all the media who tried to stand on the high moral ground but found it crumbling away around them as public sentiment lined up against them. It proved that the ends don’t justify the means every time, and yes, while the pollies were stupid to be discussing sensitive material as hacks were pressed on the other side of the café window, the means don’t necessarily justify the ends.

Most improved Telly Critters

This award goes to TVNZ’s Breakfast.

In the lunar crater left on TV ONE’s Breakfast by the stellar implosion of Paul Henry, new hosts Petra Bagust and Corren Dann were hung out to dry for several weeks.

Attacked by razor-toothed packs of commentators and critics they staggered on until, miraculously, one day – they found their own characters. Yes, it’s frothy and light with a snap, crackle and pop but at least it is once again watchable.

Those who prefer healthier muesli can opt for Rachel Smalley’s creditable effort at pumping out nutritious hard news on TV3’s Firstline.

Gone But Not Forgotten

He has an ego bigger than Paul Holmes, his career meltdown was the envy of Michael Laws, but Paul Henry ain’t seen nothin’ yet. His trans-Tasman leap to Channel Ten’s new morning show has a “into the valley of death…” air about it. Quite frankly Ten has a reputation for being a newsman’s graveyard but, luckily, Paul is more showman than journalist so his reincarnation on what Lachlan Murdoch apparently wants to shape into an Aussie Fox News might not be the disaster we all expect.

His co-host is touted as being Lachlan’s former supermodel wife Sarah and, serious career advice here, Paul, this is not the TVNZ newsroom! Keep it zipped (and I don’t mean your mouth)….

Meri Kirihimete to all…..

And so it’s proven to be. He was well liked by staff and by management during his time at the Deathstar.

Let’s be fair, Flannery was no doubt chosen because his predecessor, Mad Bad Bill Ralston, caused so many waves for the Good Ship TVNZ, management was no doubt desperate to sail into calmer – but less courageous – journalistic waters.

But those editorial waters were so calm that Flannery’s news and current affairs legacy is less about rigor and more about reporting rumour and tabloid gossip.

Anthony Flannery, TVNZ's departing Head of News & Current Affairs

Since he’s arrived on the scene, TVNZ has moved back into its former 6pm torpor of taking that morning’s Herald front page and dutifully reporting it 12 hours later.  After all, they cry, we’re different, we’re broadcast news and a little bit special.

So editorially flabby but what how does TVNZ News rate in a production sense?  Dressed up like a hooker on K Road on a Saturday night. Despite across-the-newsroom job cuts Short-Flannel-Pants decided to employ those news shamans Frank N Magid Associates, Midwestern consultant wannabes, who gave us the most pimped up One News Kiwis have ever had the misfortune to view.

Because when the Magids (or Maggots as the hacks like to call them) come in, originality leaves by the back door.

What you get is dull donuts of live crosses set against concrete walls, containing information that is crying out to be placed in the story itself, a formulaic approach that dulls the senses and fogs the brain.

The Maggots favour stories that focus on the reporter, rather than the facts. After all who needs them when in fact you’re a news promoter not a news producer.

Short-Flannel-Pants is reputed to have spent more than a $1 million dollars on these puff-piece promoters. Why? Maybe it was because he didn’t have any ideas of his own when it came to the international mystery of how to be relevant to your audience in today’s ever changing media world.

His disappearance back across The Ditch has been predicted for at least a year as his wife and family moved home back months ago.

His new gig as the head of news and current affairs for the Ten network will no doubt suit him. The channel has been labeled “troubled” by Granny Herald (which is tabloid-speak for down-the-toilet-and-sinking-fast), Flannery will be eminently suited to Ten’s ambulance-chasing-court-reporting style of news.

And, as the small battalion of TVNZ’s middle news managers sense that their time of glory has come, there’s no doubt that TVNZ management, still caught in a strange Cultural Cringe Tango, will choose an offshore figure to be their HONCA.

Anyone from the UK or Aussie will do.

After all, a Kiwi couldn’t do it could they?