I don’t know how it happened but I’m on an Air New Zealand flight on the way home for a lightning visit - and somehow we managed to book tickets for $A399.
Pretty damn good. Dontcha love competition?
I haven’t flown Air NZ for yonks and it was pretty good. Anyway, for some reason the airport was deserted, which is unusual for a Friday, and I steamed straight through check-in with an hour to spare. A couple of chardonnays, a couple of magazines and things are looking sweet.
I love flying.
Naturally I picked up a handful of papers on the way in including the Friday Australian Financial Review and the New Zealand Herald to add to the Bulletin and a copy of Time bought at the newsagents on the way out. I bought the Bullie, as it’s called over here, because its cover headline shrieks about the fall of Fairfax. I bought Time because the cover is “Cool Kiwis: Why it’s suddenly hot to be on the edge of the world”. I got the AFR because on Friday it has the Review section, which is often brilliant and stimulating in very un-financial ways. I picked up the NZ Herald because I haven’t seen it in print in ages, though I go to the site most mornings.
The AFR this week was a little light on items of interest to me personally, but I picked up some stuff that I will follow up on at work when I get back. Pitched as “your Guide to the World of Issues, Ideas & Opinion” the Review section features something on a WTO meeting in Cancun, Mexico, which I can’t be bothered reading, another on the appeal of Six Feet Under, which I’ve never seen, an item on the philosophy of science and some stuff on the Australian judicial system. For me a bad week, except for an article on Michel Foucoult’s deconstruction of “society”.
(The nice man is about to offer me a beer. I have a choice of Export Gold or Steinlager. How wonderful. Make mine an Ecky, kind sir.)
The Bullie was interesting, though pretty disparaging to anyone living sout h of Taupo.
The discussion about Michael Cullen’s role is interesting too. He treats “the revenue” as if it was his own money.
Time’s NZ feature was a bit too sweet to be believed. Sure, New Zealand is performing well, and it really is a great place. These articles are great PR, but not much else for anyone connected to the place.
Now, the New Zealand Herald. Hmmm. This one’s a bit problematical. First the Friday edition:
What have they done to the design! Is it a broadsheet that thinks it’s a tabloid, or is it a tabloid printed as a broadsheet? I can’t work it out.
And why do we need those bold pointers on the introductions? An item on Virgin Blue has the intro “AVIATION: Airline says…” Oh, so Virgin Blue is an airline. I see. Or, even more stupidly, under the headline “Telecom offers farmers speedy internet deal” we have an intro that reads “TELECOMS: Broadband plan could…” So Telecom is a telecoms company. I might have missed that.
(The Chicken Kiev’s just arrived!)
Also it looks like each section heading has a slightly different style with some using narrow fonts and some normal. The plugs on the front page are too overpowering using too many fonts.
SuperSPORT
With OnForm
Hmm.
What that "SuperSport" refers to is the sports supplement. Now here’s a section that really knows what it’s about and does it well. Looks right, reads right.
As to the content, there’s some pretty decent stuff in the Herald though clearly some non-news. Take the business lead on Vector: “Vector has finally…” That “finally” is a dead giveaway: everybody knew before the story was written. A few lines down: “Vector’s canning of the float came as no surprise…” Right.
I always find “Small Business” sections a bit patronizing and to have a review of a digital camera in the middle of your IT page is a bit crass too. But when you’ve only got one page what can you do? Chris Barton’s column on Microsoft was nice and lively though.
The second lead on the front page is an item on the closure of water birthing pools in three hospitals. Only in NZ.
(Ice cream and a wee bottle of wine!)
After stepping out on the town at midnight and catching some zzzzs I checked out the Weekend edition, and it’s a totally different beast. Good reading and much cleaner. The teaser panels are bigger but much better executed. I didn’t like them devoting the whole front page to GM (and the illo, a piece of corn with Helen clark’s face, was a tad amateurish). The profile on Tony Timpson by Paul Panckhurst was a bravura piece of weekly business writing. Excellent, in-depth work on a really interesting guy.
Then there’s Gordie in the middle of the opinion page… don’t get me started.
To draw the weekend to a close, the Sunday Star-Times steps up. It also looks much better than I remember and knows its job as a weekly, though I found the arts/books coverage a bit lightweight.
The Star-Times is nice a contrarian, stirring the pot with stories like the one on how the Lord of the Rings films didn’t really benefit NZ and Rod Oram’s prediction that the Qantas/Air NZ merger would go ahead.