The Spinoff has a similar-sized audience to The BFD but the similarities end there. The BFD is funded 95% by our 1600+ members and 5% by our advertising revenue.
The BFD serves a broad church of political views that includes libertarian, centre-right, and conservative readers of whom the majority are aged between 55-75. The Spinoff on the other hand serves left-wing Millennials.
Media outlets have enjoyed a bonanza of taxpayer funding under this Government – especially with the introduction of NZ on Air’s new “public interest journalism” fund.
But as you’ll see, many of the funded programmes are at best strange, and at worst, stray into political propaganda.
[…] We’ve also looked into the funding of one particular media outlet: our “friends” at The Spinoff, an online lifestyle magazine for left-wing millennials.
The Spinoff has had its funding spike in the last year, and is now engaged in a hiring spree.
Taxpayer’s Union
Click here to see the full list of NZ on Air grants received by The Spinoff.
All of this raises the question: can a government-dependent media outlet truly be considered ‘independent’?
Of course, they can’t.
We serve a larger audience and we are competing with an organisation that can now afford to go on a “hiring spree” because they are propped up with great dollops of taxpayer money.
The Spinoff claims that they have over 10,000 members but we have no way of knowing what percentage of these so-called ‘memberships’ was purchased by the biggest organisation of all…the government.
Imagine if The BFD had the government purchasing our memberships in bulk!
The Spinoff has large corporate sponsors. I bet that if you compare apples with apples The BFD’s one thousand six hundred individual memberships would beat The Spinoff’s individual memberships hands down. Having the government and other corporates purchase ‘subscriptions’ with a lump sum and then crowing that you have 10,000 members is dishonest.
Now that we know that their so-called ten thousand memberships are not the same as our one thousand six hundred plus individual memberships we will no longer be comparing ourselves to The Spinoff as it would not be comparing apples with apples.
While we congratulate them on getting corporate sponsorship and government cash we are very proud of our one thousand six hundred plus individual memberships and the fact that we are 100% independent because of it.
If you haven’t already subscribed please do so today to help us to compete against a competitor with the deep pockets of the government and corporates at its disposal.
We need your support and we need your memberships. Will you join our community?
