Posts by Josie McNaught
Last ←Newer Page 1 2 3 4 5 Older→ First
-
If Hosking is not a journalist (which begs the question - what tribe does he belong to - the 50 year old blowhards club perhaps?) then he isn't entitled to any of the privileges and/or defences that are afforded to those who do happily own up to being part of the profession. Small consolation but he could still come a cropper!
-
The policy has Bill English's paws all over it remember - Jonkey is just the messenger because English is starting to look alarmingly like some Scrooge or Shylock type character and they don't want to alarm their loyal supporters - many of whom obviously aspire to be slum landlords.
-
Later in the show, I talk to three young journalism graduates about the realities of training for an industry where both employment and pay are shrinking.
This is the key issue: forget about TVNZ’s shrinking executive offices.( When I worked there it always amazed me that we had just 2 floors MAKING telly and five floors “managing” it. If it’s balancing out – then I’m all for it! ) But as I say – the key issue is your young journos…. perhaps you could ask Richard about the realities for his students…his institution is taking $1000 of dollars off these kids each year… sure there will always be a job on the local paper in Invercargill or Whakatane, but local radio is being concentrated in Auckland and telly as you say is shrinking rapidly. Where does he see the career path going for these grads? With the commercial side being so important – what sort of clout do Pacific companies have to essentially fund Pacific media? Maori TV get over $30 million from the taxpayer in funding – but if that was cut off – would there be a Maori media? I don’t think iwi would be queuing up to fund it – do you? Also back to your students, how can they get well-paid work that will help them to pay off their loans and establish themselves in a community? Things like buying a house??A loan of $40,000 should be able to be paid off in four years post-study at around $8- $12,000 a year – but not if you are jumping from one low-paid media contract to another (even an experienced free lance sub can only get around $30 an hour b4 tax.) Or your students face having to work for free as an intern at a magazine or in TV. I’m doing law at AUT and I’ve met a few journo students there. They have incredible technical facilities at AUT and great training – but I’m not convinced the current labour market matches up with their expectations. I’m lucky I can retrain in Law (my first degree and post grad journo training was all free of course) and use my media skills to boot hopefully once I graduate – there are opportunities for me in Law – there certainly aren’t many for women journos in their late 40s! (Esp not in the kindergarten world of women on the telly although I see balding male walruses do alright (!) I wonder the same about opportunities for Pasifika journos…. perhaps the time has come for govt to fund Pasifika media as well…. ????
-
Hard News: The Hager saga continues, in reply to Russell Brown,
And now the Herald have taken Glucina's tawdry column and elevated it to a plumb spot inside the paper . It sits up there like a piece of journalism gobbling up precious column inches that could be used for actual stories.
-
OnPoint: Sunlight Resistance, in reply to nzlemming,
Just spotted Stuart Nash, Josie Paganism lunching together.
Job interview??? -
Well done Keith - but your list of 'bads' on the part of Collins et al had me wondering and can anyone confirm/deny - didn't the story about Gareth Hughes and the 18 year old student (no charges laid btw) break on Whaleoil???
-
Good post and summary - but have to say after helping special needs students this week at Western Springs College, for their mock exams, all the talk about inclusion etc is wasted if the facilities are at the third world level that WSC has been allowed to sink to. The teachers do an amazing job in terrible conditions. The special needs 'facility' at WSC is one ageing, damp, over crowded, poorly lit prefab which is not big enough to comfortably hold students in wheelchairs, (and you should see the slippery rumpty ramp outside) It has old and inappropriate furniture, books and teaching materials compete for space with students and there is no separate computer area. The classrooms for mainstream are the same. Third world in a first world city.
WSC was supposed to have a new school building project underway by now, but the current government have let it slide. The local MP Nikki Kaye (that was - it is now David Shearer's baby) never replied to any requests from the parent group to come and visit and see for herself how important a brand new high school is for the area - until I rang Nick Jones at The Herald and he started asking questions. Then she would only come and meet at 10 am on a weekday which was hopeless for so many parents. The outcome? A big fat don't know. She said maybe the land is not suitable now for a school because of subsidence (and of course equivalent land in the area has gone through the roof thanks to the rampant housing market that has been allowed to develop in Auckland) another fob off solution? Build a multi-storey mega school from Year one to 13. Where? They have no idea. Why? ditto and why should our children be going to a multi-storey school more suited to Hong Kong than Auckland? The $50 million cost was giving Kaye a bad hair day. $50 mill? Where was she when that and more was being spent during the RWC on useless facilities like stadiums. In fact the best solution is for WSC to move into the $100 million dollar + stadium at Eden Park. The government made a decision to spend millions on that very quickly and it has facilities that WSC - and the special needs children especially can only dream about. Proper access for wheelchairs for a start! Warm, dry, nice new toilets, carpeted areas….and it sits empty day after day after day, racking up more debt.
So yes let's support the party that supports special needs, but it's an empty policy goal if it doesn't have the best facilities to back it up. -
Hard News: Never mind the quality ..., in reply to CJM,
I used to do the panel regularly (goodness knows they could do with a few more women regardless) but after having a couple of swipes at Key, I ended up way down the list - and heard unofficially that the govt media team didn't like the cut of my jib - but that might also be the fact that RNZ only want Jane Clifton (and the other Josie who inhabits that murky world between "communications and journalism" ) to talk politics. Because I do arts stuff I'm not allowed to step over the line into big boy politics stuff. I recently heard they had a new chick on - she runs a PR firm - but did she tell the listeners who her clients are??? No way. You'll just have to work that out from who she "promotes" on the show
-
Hard News: Hope and Wire, in reply to Emma Hart,
I got to 46 minutes. Couldn't agree more.
I'd be interested to know how they handle the CTV building collapse… if at all. After all the evidence that came out of the Royal Commission, will we have a scene looking back to 1986 when the council signed off the permit for the building, knowing (as we all do now) that the design had serious defects? Who will play Alan Reay and David Harding? Or building manager John Drew? How about a scene where council officers inspect the building after the September quake, but don't bring an engineer with them, and still give it the ok? If you want to get a feel for how this tragedy has been for real people rather than the cardboard cutouts delivering their cliches through broken glass and dust on TV3, just read Rebecca Macfie's Listener article (22 Feb 2014) and these bios of the 117 innocent people who died when that building came down.if the link doesn't work it's Volume 6 page 1- 118 of the Royal Commission report available on their website. Volume 9 makes for a good read too.
(p.s. We don't have TV anymore so don't know how the ads were handled on the night, but viewing it online the breaks are dominated by this bad taste scratchies ad that asks people if they've had some 'luck' lately…. yuk)
-
Hard News: The Big Chill, in reply to harry hausen,
Cleverer lawyering would be to set up an offshore Trust (Bahamas? Vanuatu?) to publish the book and sign over ownership of all the material contained there in - (research, interviews etc) to the Trustees who reside there. That way the govt would have to apply direct to them for the material (and with good justification) and the writer can say, hand on heart, "I don't own the research material and therefore have no right to give it to a 3rd party - go ask my Trustees for it. "