NZ Community Newspapers Association Snubbed by Select Committee

Jannette Thompson
General Manager
Local Matters 2005 Ltd
KJA FaceBook page

Good afternoon

It is with amazement that I see that the nation’s community newspaper sector has again been overlooked in the COVID-19 response.

An article on Stuff this morning lists the players who will present to the Select Committee tomorrow as follows: NZME, Stuff, MediaWorks, TVNZ, RNZ, Newsroom, The Spinoff and the National Business Review.

And yet, the NZ Community Newspapers Association, which represents independent and NZ-owned media companies, is not on the list. We are small operations but collectively, we cover the length and breadth of NZ and publish around 1.2 million papers a week under 80 mastheads. We speak directly to our communities with messages they understand. I would hazard a guess that collectively, we employ more journalists than NZME and Stuff combined.

Our businesses have been severely impacted upon by the COVID-19 lockdown, particularly given the confusion over whether or not we were an essential service. We are bona fide members of the media landscape in New Zealand and it would be nice if this message could get through to the powers that be in Wellington so our interests could be properly represented at these discussions.

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