Sinead Boucher, executive chair and publisher of Stuff, and Joanna Norris, managing director of masthead publishing also spoke next.
Stuff was the second most searched term on Google last year after weather and news, Boucher said.
It is one of the biggest media companies in NZ and employs hundreds of journalists and “other staff who live and work in the towns they cover”.
“Even if someone never reads a single story … they’d benefit from the impact of good journalism, helping keep the company our country free of corruption and our societies healthy and our ability to continue to do this is in great peril.”
Journalism is in a fight for its life, she said.
“[Big tech] companies are squeezing us out, but using our own work to do so.”
She warned AI was creating what looked like “an extinction-level event” for news media.
Read more here. Discuss it on The BFD.
