One of the country’s top investigative journalism teams, Stuff Circuit, has surprisingly missed out on the annual round of public funding through NZ on Air.
Stuff Circuit, presented by Paula Penfold and with four team members, has won multiple awards for Stuff.co.nz, which has regularly lauded the unit’s achievements.
But in the list of current affairs programmes to be funded for 2024 through NZ on Air, Stuff Circuit was a glaring omission.
The programme does not appear to have published any video documentaries this year and it’s understood reforms at Stuff, splitting the new paywalled journalism for sites The Press, The Post and The Waikato Times away from the main site has left the Circuit unit in limbo. Its in-depth journalism examining important public issues is not in synch with the free site’s increasing reach for clicks with lighter, faster material.
The Stuff site is now overseen by a former Newstalk ZB producer Nadia Tolich, who has launched snackable products like the daily fast-twitch podcast Newsable.
There are fears the Stuff Circuit programme might not return at all.
The NZ on Air funding list, which included investment for TVNZ’s Q&A, Newshub Nation, Newsroom Investigates, The Hui and The South Today, but not Stuff Circuit, was the first sign many in the industry had that the decorated series was now in doubt.
In 2023’s funding announcement a year ago, Stuff Circuit received $370,000. The publishing platform, Stuff, would be expected to commit further funds towards such a show.
The Circuit team includes Penfold, executive producer Terence Taylor, senior producer Louisa Cleave, editor Toby Longbottom and cameraman Phil Johnson.
In 2017, a Stuff news story described the team as “a crack investigative unit given the luxury of time – years, if necessary – to produce quality in-depth journalism.”
Stuff’s then executive editor and now owner, Sinead Boucher, said: “This is a very talented team of journalists and their skills and the work they produce is really world-class.
“I admire the way they marry great investigative skills with an absolutely beautiful creative visual style to their work. It is very distinctive and absorbing.”
Boucher has moved to a new role of executive chair, handing the chief executive’s job to former NZME digital executive Laura Maxwell with three managing directors.
Last year Stuff Circuit produced a bold and controversial video documentary, called Fire And Fury that examined the groups behind the Parliament anti-mandate protests. Its tagline was “Who’s driving a violent, misinformed New Zealand and why.” The documentary was the subject of six complaints to New Zealand Media Council, but none were upheld.
In 2022 the unit won a World Association of Newspapers gold award in the best use of online video category for the documentary Disordered, a multi-part investigation into Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder in New Zealand.
Now Stuff has split its newspaper titles and their associated paywalled news sites away from Stuff.co.nz, with separate staffs, the Circuit team has not been front and centre.
Stuff Circuit has been working for more than a year on a story on Chinese influence and money in New Zealand and our politics but the project has been stalled. Externally, Stuff has indicated ongoing legal scrutiny is behind the delay.
The absence of Stuff Circuit from the NZ on Air funding round could be due to the lack of what the industry calls “deliverables”- or shows completed and aired – in the 12-month period being funded.
But Stuff, like its rival print and digital publisher NZME, has also been responding to many months of revenues below the previous year and ongoing pressure from lower than normal consumer spending by looking to restructure and cut costs.
It has seen its editor of The Post newspaper Caitlin Cherry and MeToo lead, Alison Mau, depart, and since then a wave of resignations before and during the company restructure, including the chief editor Mark Stevens to RNZ.
Country Calendar is back
Fans of TVNZ’s longstanding show Country Calendar had been wondering why the show’s Facebook page hadn’t been posting its weekly competitions.
Today, an explanation from the CC team: “Hi everyone. In early November, Facebook sent us this message: ‘Your page has been unpublished. This is because Hyundai Country Calendar goes against our Community Standards.’ We immediately asked Facebook for a review and approached them many times in different ways, but we received no response for the next 23 days. We’ve still had no explanation, and we don’t know why our warm, community-minded online group of 90,000 followers was frozen out, but the ban has been lifted in the same sudden and seemingly arbitrary way that it was imposed. So welcome to you all – we’re back!”
