A visit to NZ’s best small daily paper

Kim Gillespie feels the pressure of success. In his fourth month as editor of The Daily Post of Rotorua, he is hoping to repeat the paper’s status as New Zealand’s top paper of less than 30,000 circulation in the 2009 Qantas Media Awards.

When I visited the Post’s newsroom recently, Gillespie was busy burning CDs with entries for the 2010 Qantas competition. The Post, with a circulation of 11,500, was one of the few APN dailies to show a circulation gain in 2009.

Gillespie, 36, became editor of the Post in December. He previously had two stints at the paper in various reporting and editing roles, and most recently was editor of the Wanganui Chronicle, another APN paper on the west coast of the North Island.

I attended the afternoon news meeting, at which editors pitched stories for the following day’s paper, chose a line-up for the front page and even tried out headlines for the lead story about a dramatic rescue of a “boatie” (boater) from an overturned yacht in Lake Rotorua. (The winner: "Who saved this boatie's life?" with an overline saying "Mystery Hero".)

The paper’s chief reporter (what Americans call the city editor) reported on that day’s employee survey – including advertising and business staffs – of what the top stories should be. That reflects a conscious effort to choose stories that appeal to women, who are responsible for most of the “casual” (single copy) sales. Although technically an “afternoon” paper, the Post is on the streets by mid-morning, which catches shoppers earlier in the day and has contributed to the circulation increase.

Only the front page and three local news pages are designed in house. National, world and feature pages have been outsourced to a “sub-hub” in Auckland run by Pagemasters, an Australian company. The paper is printed in Tauranga in the plant of a sister paper, the Bay of Plenty Times.

The next round of Qantas Media Award winners will be announced in June. I’ll report then on whether the Post retains its “best of class” honor.

Journalese of the week: Sub hub. Copy editors in Britain, Australia and New Zealand are known as sub-editors, and their craft is called subbing. Hence, a centralized operation for editing copy, writing headline and designing pages is a sub hub.


Photo credit: The Daily Post

A new Kiwi spectator sport: wave watching

New Zealand newspapers rely heavily on "casual" (single copy) sales -- at some regional papers, for up to half of their paid circulation. Every shop that sells newspapers displays posters with a teaser for the day's top story. Monday's headlines about New Zealand's reaction to tsunami triggered by the Chilean earthquake caught my attention.

The casual reaction of some New Zealanders -- head for the beach to check out the action -- drew criticism from Civil Defense officials. The increase in sea level was moderate along the east coast of the North Island (up to 1 meter at Whitianga, a beach I visted last month) and less in Auckland. Still, the force of the waves posed some risk to unprepared boaters and swimmers.

Officials were miffed that some Kiwis (a common term for New Zealanders) didn't take the warnings seriously. The "stupid" comment came from John Carter, the minister of Civil Defense. On the Web site of today's Herald, there's a debate over whether local councils should be able to prosecute gawkers who ignore warnings to evacuate.

Adventure-loving Kiwis, who invented extreme sports like black-water rafting (inner-tubing through caves) and Zorbing (rolling down hills inside a plastic ball), will no doubt find a way to exploit the public's curiosity about future tsunamis.