In mere months, more than a dozen community newspaper titles have merged, sold or shuttered in a wave of consolidation as leading researchers raise concerns about the emergence of "news deserts".
It comes amid wider turmoil in the media sector as hundreds of journalists lose their jobs due to the closure of Newshub and TVNZ's cuts to current affairs programmes.
Cuts this year have been blamed on falling advertising revenue and a tough economy.
Uncertainty also remained over the future of the Local Democracy Reporting (LDR) scheme, which funded 16 journalists to report on community and local council issues.
Media and Communications Minister Paul Goldsmith says "further support" for the scheme, introduced in 2019, has been under consideration.
"The Local Democracy Reporting scheme has been very successful and further support is something we're considering," he said in a statement.
The programme has only been funded until the end of the year from the budgets of RNZ and NZ On Air. Media analyst Gavin Ellis told 1News the programme was in danger without new funding from the Government.
"It's absolutely vital that funding continues. It's the difference between covering local government and not covering local government for some publications," he said.
"There has been significant coverage of local affairs, that would not be there without it."
The academic has been commissioned twice by NZ On Air to review the scheme. He said the existing LDR system was "proven" to be effective, and didn't need big changes if the Government wanted to provide further support.
Ellis, a former editor at the New Zealand Herald, led the release of a report into the future of journalism for Auckland University think tank Koi Tū earlier this month.
For many community newspapers, "there is no digital future", according to owners spoken to by researchers for the paper.
Additionally, the paper warned New Zealanders faced total "news deserts" emerging — parts of the country with either very limited or no coverage at all.
The LDR scheme was first piloted with a remit to "fill gaps in reporting" on publicly-funded organisations — predominantly local councils and DHBs.
A group of over a dozen journalists serving the programme now produced stories for distribution in community publications and national news sites — including 1News.co.nz. There are now 16 local democracy reporters predominantly stationed in the regions, delivering more than 1 million page news site views each month, according to RNZ.
Hundreds of reporters covering local government issues have lost their jobs over the past two decades as advertisers chose to spend money on big digital platforms, such as Facebook and Google, instead of media businesses that produced journalism.
Community news deserts emerging — even in cities
AUT senior journalism lecturer Greg Treadwell said fewer observers at council meetings likely meant poorer local decision-making in news deserts.
"You can't just say you can find local news on Facebook now. Communities now go to Facebook to find out which roads are open and closed and that's perfectly legit," he said.
"But why was the road in a state where it needed to be closed? Why did it flood? Those are the questions that only journalists are really interested in asking on behalf of everybody."
Treadwell, a former editor of the Gulf News, said partial news deserts were emerging across the country, where there were far fewer reporters than there had been in the past — even in major centres such as Auckland.
Earlier this month, the Howick and Pakuranga Times was placed into liquidation, holding debts of more than $900,000, after being unable to find a buyer.
Its digital assets were later acquired by a local council politician and former ACT election candidate. The paper's patch in East Auckland represented a population equivalent to Tauranga.
Treadwell said: "There used to be a journalist at every single council meeting across Auckland, and sometimes journalists from competing news organisations.
"Now that those council meetings can take place without councillors having a sense that they're being watched by, and listened to, by journalists, then the quality of political process just deteriorates — and I think we're seeing that."
He continued: "If you're somebody who cares about your community, and you're not hearing what your local council's doing, then you're basically shut out of the political process. The more we shut people out of the political process, the less they care about them, and the less likely they are to vote."
Across the city, only a handful of locally-owned papers remained.
One North Shore editor said he expected his "lean" operation to be in it for the long term but revenue was a constant challenge.
Costs such as printing and distribution were rising across the board, said Devonport Flagstaff editor Rob Drent, whilst businesses shifted to buying cheaper online ads. His newspaper was published fortnightly and delivered throughout the Devonport peninsula.
"We're facing the same challenges as the main media players. Our advantage is we've got quite a lean operation, so we haven't probably got the massive overheads that some of the bigger players have," he told 1News.
"We don't see ourselves sort of closing down anytime soon, but we are looking at different modes of revenue."
Movers and shakers in local news
It's been a busy three months of downsizing and acquisitions for community newspapers.
In March, NZME announced it would acquire Tauranga-based Sun Media, followed days later by its purchase of the Gisborne Herald.
The 102-year-old Wairoa Star, with shares partially held by NZME, would fold a month after its board "exhausted all options" for keeping the paper afloat.
Earlier this month, Stuff acquired the Wairarapa Times-Age with its former local owner saying it had been a "challenging time for a standalone publication".
The Wairoa Star has been keeping locals informed since 1921, Henry McMullan reports. (Source: 1News)
The privately-held company had undertaken a review of its mastheads, which resulted in the closing or merging of several titles, citing a "portfolio that was often overlapping and didn't always fit local business needs".
Meanwhile, Stuff shuttered two community titles, the Hauraki Herald and Kapiti Observer, while consolidating eight other mastheads.
According to advertising figures listed on Stuff's website, the papers affected by mergers in Auckland have a combined weekly reach of nearly 300,000 people.
Ellis said it was a "mistake" for some publishers to take more localised reporting out of publications, with most of Stuff's community papers having been run out of centralised newsrooms.
"There is no point in having a series of titles that carry material about all of Auckland when what you're looking for is the story about what's happening outside your front door," he said.
On Auckland's North Shore, Drent was familiar with a squeeze on local journalists who were based in the community they were covering.
In response to changes that stripped local reporting from the Stuff-owned North Shore Times, he helped to launch the Rangitoto Observer around five years ago.
Drent said the investment had mixed results, having only "made money occasionally" while suffering a rocky time through Covid-19 lockdowns.
However, he said the paper has successfully built a "loyal readership" with an audience that primarily consumed the free print edition.
"It's pretty well established and, in terms of readership, we get quite healthy feedback."
Stuff's masthead publishing managing director Joanna Norris said there were no editorial job losses resulting from the company's masthead review.
She added: "In the Auckland market, we have this year added an additional two community reporter roles to our team."
'We need backing from the community'
With a donation drive expected to kick off this week, Drent said his publications needed its audience to value news to find sustainability.
"We get about $400 a month from donations now, but we haven't really done a full-on push for it… I think the impression locally is that we're not part of the whole media jungle and that we're a bit immune to the industry," he said.
"We're running a full-page ad in the next issue, saying, we're part of the global trend away from newspaper advertising and that we basically need some solid backing from the community to keep going."
Finding new ways to fund local journalism was now paramount, Ellis said.
His research stressed new approaches could span a wide range of possibilities — from encouraging the role of philanthropy, non-profits, trusts, or other commercial models.
"Philanthropy is something that we can't discount, particularly if it means the difference between a community paper continuing to operate or folding," he said.
Ellis continued: "It's really important, in looking at alternative structures, that we still have to ensure they have safeguards to protect the very nature of independent journalism.
"I think that it would be too easy to lose sight of that, in the interests of making them viable one way or another."
One suggestion from his report included recognising journalism as a charitable purpose for philanthropic donations and introducing different tax structures to recognise the public interest benefits of news media companies.
He posited: "If we don't maintain the viability of local journalism, what does it do to local democracy? What does it do to our ability to hold our elected representatives to account or indeed, for some, to even know who our elected representatives are?"
The majority of voters in Auckland did not vote in the last local elections.
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