Duncan Greive, The Spinoff Founder 20.02.25

From your perspective, what are the most urgent issues facing the news media today?

We’re living through a complex polycrisis in the news media. Some of the issues are self-inflicted, others are policy failures, others the result of the scrambling of the information ecosystem wrought by social media. All are connected to the rise of the internet.

Let’s start with mistakes we made. Because advertising had always been the biggest funder of journalism, the vast majority of news organisations put their content online for free, thinking that digital ads would pay for it. That was a catastrophic failure, which trained news consumers to think the product should be free, while also meaning the process of learning what people were willing to pay for was delayed, often by decades.

Still – it’s not all our fault. The news media has many powerful disadvantages compared to the social and search giants which control content distribution. These companies pay little local tax, and have no specific regulations governing their content. For example, if a news organisation defames someone, they’re liable. If the same claim is made on social media, only the person making the claim is considered liable.

Similarly, news organisations provide much of the first draft of information which is disseminated and discussed on large platforms, but the revenue flows to where the discussion happens, not where the information originated. There’s the parallel issue of trust decay, which is real and widespread, and not always wrong. Still, a lot of that comes down to how platforms are engineered to exploit vulnerabilities in human nature. I think about it this way: when a news story is well-reported and accurate, the story might be discussed, but the reporting is rarely talked about. However, when someone disagrees with an opinion piece (a form of journalism which has existed for centuries), there is often a wave of denunciation of the organisation which published it.

To be clear, these are hard problems to solve, and news organisations can do better. But with revenues shrinking and demands for more coverage and different content forms growing, it’s an extremely difficult environment to operate in.

What forces are shaping the industry most right now?

I think the biggest forces shaping the news industry are habit-based. News used to be baked into almost all mass entertainment platforms. At 6pm, or on top of the hour, a bulletin. Every morning, a newspaper. They even used to show news before movies. It meant that the population was consistently exposed to the same set of stories, of basic facts. They weren’t always right – every era has its mistakes and omissions – but they were broadly correct, and certainly made everyone exposed to news.

In this era, ever more attention is gathered by a tiny basket of platforms. Social and user-generated content platforms which are consistently shifting their content forms and algorithms, sometimes towards and sometimes away from news. Some of those platforms have strong potential for revenue generation (YouTube), others have little to no potential (TikTok, Instagram). The biggest issue though, is that while people might imagine their consumption on those platforms in the same way as they once did news (ie, replacing their TV watching time), the information they get there is entirely unvetted, often having the appearance of journalism (eg, podcasts, both real and staged) – but it’s almost incidental whether what they’re conveying has a basis in fact. The algo doesn’t care. These forces can feel irresistible. Yet still, we persist.

AI’s role in media is expanding ~ where do you see its most significant impact & what guardrails need to be in place?

I’m somewhat of an AI-skeptic when it comes to news media. I think it will and should have great impacts on reporting. With tools like NotebookLM you can surface key information within dense PDFs in a way which streamlines reporting. The New York Times has AI-generated audio readings of many stories, which are great for accessibility. In general, you should be upfront with audiences about what you're doing and why, as a baseline.

But in a local content, AI-generated summaries at the top of stories are just more junk to scroll past. The BBC found that more than half of AI-generated summaries incorporated errors into the copy. This hallucination might be harder to chase out than we think. So far the incredible boom in AI spending doesn’t seem to be matched with equivalent utility. That doesn’t mean it won’t, but I need to see more to believe it.

The main reason I am somewhat cold on AI in journalism is that the kind of work I like – the written form, made with craft and flair – seems basically impossible to replicate. Whenever I read AI prose I feel like I can tell right away, as do people on the other end of birthday messages. That doesn’t mean it won’t change and improve, nor that it won’t be good enough for some people. But it’s priced into company valuations and spending plans as if the maximalist version of it is definitely happening. We’ll see.

What do you think needs to change to create a future where journalism can thrive?

I do think we need a grand bargain between platforms and news organisations, with some sort of levy system in place to ensure sustainable funding. Massive international news organisations can win without that, but in a small country like New Zealand, we just won’t have journalism at scale without that. It doesn’t need to be hugely onerous, and can come with some strings attached – I’m not averse to ideas about how we can make news coverage more pluralistic and responsive to the views of the audience.

I also think that the recent Ministry of Culture and Heritage discussion document, which included talk of “must carry” provisions, was really interesting. This meant that TVs would have to have local apps prominently displayed, for example – but I think it could also be conceptually brought into search, social and AI. All these are just surfaces, and if you want to have a population which has a shared set of facts and values, you shouldn’t be wholly indifferent about or unaware of what is being shipped to people via their screens. That feels like an extreme position now, but it’s actually just a return to what was completely routine until 20 years ago.

One bigger idea: just make all companies and people automatically liable for whatever they publish. I think that one move would fix the internet.

What do you think Rubettes should consider or think about?

Look, I’m sure Rubettes are already about as thoughtful and considered a group as we have in New Zealand. But I humbly suggest that media is worth paying for, and that picking 2-3 publications from here and around the world to fund will pay dividends to your brain. There’s just something different about the collected wisdom and judgement of an organisation, versus a mass of individuals. And try and make a habit of it. A particular time of day when you read certain sites, or a collection of newsletters which keep you in the routine. It all really, really helps.

Despite all the challenges, what gives you hope for the future of media?

Honestly, it’s the people making it. The Spinoff is made up of 25 people, average age maybe 30, and every day I read something or listen to something which makes me understand this country in a new way. They’re so smart and talented and driven, and walk into this troubled industry with eyes wide open, just out of pure mission. That goes for every other media organisation around. So long as they’re here, and audiences still see how what we do is really different from what comes through on social media, then we have a shot. At this point, that’s all we can ask for.

Written by Duncan Greive.