This is what happened on Newshub’s worst day

Saturday, 2 March 2024

Is it indulgent for the media to write about each other?** Maybe — people lose their jobs every day.**

But the hundreds who’ll likely lose theirs in the Newshub closure have dedicated their careers to telling other people’s stories.

So Paula Penfold (who worked at Three for 13 years) talked to Newshub staff — names you’ll recognise, names you won’t, others who don’t want their names used at all — to tell their story.

This is what happened on Newshub’s worst day.

9am

Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD) Flower St Headquarters, Eden Terrace, Auckland.

The list of topics on the agenda for the regular morning news meeting on Wednesday, February 28 is solid: the Government is planning to rewrite firearms laws, the Reserve Bank is due to make an announcement on the Official Cash Rate, Dunedin’s rat-plagued Countdown is finally set to reopen.

There‘s “not a skerrick of a clue that anything was coming,” says Newshub supervising producer Angus (Gus) Gillies, a long-time, old-school journo with a contagious laugh and a gift for words.

As the meeting wraps up Gillies and fellow producer Paul Mayow head across the carpark to Chez Bob’s, as staff call it, a kind of cafeteria-common room with one redeeming feature: a decent coffee machine, “the only good thing left over from the Weldon era”.

That’s Mark Weldon, the former Olympian who in 2016 became chief executive of MediaWorks (the then-owner of TV3), and took an axe to high-profile programmes like Campbell Live, leading to a string of redundancies (including my own and the rest of the 3D investigative team).

The Weldon era was brutal but not unusual for Three staff who’d weathered restructures, cuts, takeovers and turmoil more than most media companies, resulting in a survivor mindset in the face of each new leadership: “We’ll be here when they’re gone.”

And WBD had money, so surely things would be better than before.

But by the end of 2023, the eventual 7pm replacement for Campbell Live, The Project, was gone, and the sinking lid policy meant people on other programmes were “working their asses off”.

As the new year ticked over, quietly, industry observers began to predict the next lot of cuts at Flower St would be lethal.

Journalists at Newshub, like news staff all over the country, had read the New Yorker piece asking if the media was prepared for an “extinction level event”.

The climate was grim.

But Wednesday’s 9am news meeting feels run of the mill. Nobody, at least on the shop floor, is worried about anything out of the ordinary.

If a week is a long time in politics, a day is a very long time in news.

10.12am

The email invite to an “All Hands meeting” lands in inboxes company-wide, the meeting set to begin in less than an hour.

Newshub Live at 6pm presenter Mike McRoberts is at home in Titirangi. (Disclaimer: McRoberts is Paula Penfold's former husband.)

“The phone went, it was one of my managers saying ‘have you seen the email? I think you should try and get there for it. It’s big’.”

Gus Gillies and Paul Mayow are heading back to the newsroom with their coffees when they meet Newshub director of content, Todd Symons, who tells them to open their emails.

“The language was full of dread and doom,” says Gillies. “I said to Paul, ‘Holy shit, we may not have jobs at the end of this’.”

He’d had this feeling only once before: at the Auckland Star in 1991, the year they closed it down.

11am

The Three buildings have had a few coats of paint (and some serious recent investment into studios and tech) but nothing cosmetic can fix the fact that it’s a renovated cheese factory without a room big enough for the number of staff required at the meeting.

They’re directed to the Dalmatian Cultural Society buildings up the road into, perversely, the ballroom. Security guards are stationed outside. There are “people on laptops sitting in corners”.

The big bosses step up to the mic: WBD Asia Pacific President James Gibbons, and New Zealand head Glen Kyne. They begin to read prepared scripts from glass autocues.

There’s a preamble about the “very, very tough circumstances”. And then it lands.

“We simply cannot afford to produce news in-house. That’s the fact,” Gibbons tells them.

“They ripped the band-aid off straight away,” says a staff member present. “We were grateful for that.”

Kyne doesn’t attempt to sugarcoat it.

“Folks, this is awful. We are proposing to shut down the newsroom. This would mean stopping all news production including the website from June 30.”

McRoberts thinks more is coming. “When they said the proposal was to cut Newshub I kept waiting for the ‘but’.”

None came.

“You felt the air just sucked out of the place.”

“It was quiet, deathly silent,” entertainment reporter and film reviewer Kate Rodger says.

“Then I began sobbing. Full-on, proper sobbing.”

Daniel Rutledge, Rodger’s colleague of 17 years, had made sure they were seated together. “I just put my arm around her shoulders and pulled her in.”

Behind them, a camera operator is crying, too, as is Gillies. He tears up again as he recounts the scene. “We were in the trenches together. It’s hard to explain…”

You might expect anger, but there isn’t any. The tone is subdued, perhaps because staff are all in the same boat: this time it’s not cuts by department or programme, it’s nuclear.

They also cite Kyne’s leadership, and the fact that he is visibly upset.

“I’ve got a lot of respect for Glen,” says McRoberts. “He’s a rangatira, a person who weaves people together. To have that weaving come undone in front of his eyes must have been so hard. I think that’s why people haven’t been furious at management.”

By 11.15am reporters in other newsrooms are hearing Newshub has gone.

But the shutdown show isn’t over.

Interim Head of News Richard Sutherland has only been back at Newshub a few weeks.

“He didn’t know when he signed up for it,” says one staff member. “The. Worst. Job.”

Sutherland speaks alongside Vice President People & Culture, Kylie Elsom, an experienced change manager. “She’s rolled out death notices for years,” another staffer observes.

Wider network people are asked to leave the building so news staff can question their bosses alone.

They ask about timelines and redundancy payouts. They are given “strong reassurances”.

Somebody wants to know if the company will relax its no alcohol policy for the day.

Someone else asks if there will be a 6pm news bulletin tonight.

Gillies doesn’t miss a beat. “F**k yeah, we already know what the lead story is.”

12pm

You might expect it would be an unwelcome role reversal for Newshub staff leaving the building to be confronted by reporters and photographers from other companies. Nobody wants a camera snapping their teary face when they’ve just been axed.

But these are news people, who know their industry peers are just doing their jobs, and there is no joy in it for them, no schadenfreude.

I text Kate Rodger.

“After 20 years in that building it just feels like my home and the people in it, past and present, just feel like family,” she writes. “I’m stunned they can just so brutally switch off an entire f**king newsroom.”

Sutherland’s phone blows up with messages from others in the media and from Newshub’s audience. “Times like this restore my sometimes-jaded faith in human nature.”

But not completely.

“It’s fashionable to dump on news outlets like us,” Sutherland says. “The usual cranks and malcontents [started] sounding off about how we’ve been bought and paid for by the Government, or bought and paid for by the Opposition, or the World Economic Forum, or whatever, or that we did it to ourselves by being “woke”, whatever the hell that even means.

After what he’s just had to dish out, he doesn’t hold back.

“For the mean-spirited people using this to have a crack at journalism in general, and Newshub staff in particular, well good luck to them – I hope they’re happy throwing pebbles at people who are too busy doing great work to even notice them.”

Former Three staff from all over the country and the world are hearing the news, and digesting what it means.

Melanie Reid, the acclaimed 3News and 60 Minutes investigative journalist who was a fierce champion of the company from the day she joined — in year one, 1989 — quotes beloved, departed, legendary former producer Keith Slater. “Slater always said journalism is the cornerstone of democracy. Our democracy will be further eroded because of this.”

Fellow foundation journalist Ian Wishart, posts a Hunter S Thompson quote: “The TV business is uglier than most things. It is normally perceived as some kind of cruel and shallow money trench through the heart of the journalism industry, a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free and good men die like dogs, for no good reason.”

That quote was blu-tacked to the wall of our 60 Minutes office, I guess to keep us in check.

As did the old hands, such as veteran, brilliant cameraman, the late Ross Kenward, who would delight in growling at new reporters, “Without me, you’re radio.”

That’s the thing about television news: More so than other mediums, it’s deeply collaborative. Lone wolf journalists don’t last long, they can’t do it by themselves.

So for all the Newshub faces you recognise who will likely lose their jobs, there’s a long list of those you never see: the talented producers, camera people, editors, directors, graphic designers, engineers, and freelancers who depend on the operation for work. It takes a lot of skill and a lot of people to make good television news.

That’s why it’s expensive, and harder to fund in an obliterated advertising market, hence WBD losing millions each year on the news operation, and shutting it down.

With the bad news delivered, much of the newsroom heads to their local, Galbraiths, while “us oldies” — McRoberts, Gillies, Mayow, the masterly producers John Hale and Kim Hurring — “procrastinated for an hour telling stories about the old days,” and then set about getting the bulletin ready.

Gillies describes how having been in the trenches together for so long, they work telepathically.

“When one producer goes in one direction, you automatically go in another.”

At first, there are three stories about their own looming end: investigations correspondent Michael Morrah will report the day’s events, political reporter Amelia Wade the reaction in Parliament, and a third about the history of TV3.

McRoberts doesn’t like that last idea.

“I said we’re not doing a f**king obit today. We’re a news service and we’re doing the news. People lose their jobs all the time and every day we tell their stories. This isn’t any different, it has to be handled exactly the same.

“We’ll do the obit on the last day.”

3pm

Sutherland, who has worked in and had editorial leadership roles in all the country’s major newsrooms except Whakaata Māori, watches as staff come back from the pub and get stuck into getting the bulletin ready.

“I’ve worked in more newsrooms for more years than I care to remember, and I’ve never seen a team react to a situation like that with such grace, commitment, and determination.”

Later, former long-time 3News boss Mark Jennings, co-founder of the Newsroom site, will suggest a way forward: that staff present a proposal for drastic cost-cutting changes. Slashing the 6pm bulletin from an hour to 30 minutes, getting rid of one of the two presenters, axing foreign correspondents and big-ticket expenses.

But at Flower St, they’re not feeling it.

“We’re not coming back from this,” says Gillies. “This is different. Newshub is done now.”

McRoberts quotes his mate, fellow presenter Ryan Bridge.

“He has this great line: ‘You can’t un-fart. Once it’s out it’s out’.

“We kind of feel like that. All that’s left is a terrible smell.”

5.55pm

McRoberts and co-presenter Samantha Hayes walk downstairs to the studio where the crew is lined up, to give them a hug.

“Great,” McRoberts says, “Can we please get more makeup to the set.”

5.58pm

McRoberts says “a little karakia. It helps”.

6pm

In the control room, the micro-precision begins.

“Going, going, not quite gone,” McRoberts reads the headline. The banner — the words on the bottom of the screen — riff off an infamous Paddy Gower line. “It’s (not) the f****n’ news”.

Kyne is red-eyed in the report on his own network, tearfully telling Morrah, “I've been very proud to be part of this organisation, part of the newsroom. Nothing prouder, actually. Nothing will ever compare. So this is the most difficult day.”

(Across on One News, Kyne appears businesslike.)

Morrah speaks to camera: “The announcement at the meeting this morning was completely out of the blue and utterly devastating for myself and all of my colleagues in news. Many of us have worked together for decades. Management says there will be an opportunity for feedback on the proposal, although most I’ve spoken to don’t believe that will change anything.”

In the newsroom, reporters and producers are gathered around Gillies and Hale to watch the news go out. As Morrah wraps up, they begin to cheer and clap.

“That’s so TV3,” Gillies says. “We’ve just all been told we’re being sacked but we’re all applauding the coverage of our own demise, and crying.”

Morrah and Wade’s stories run twice as long as they’re scheduled for, “but we thought f**k it. This only happens once.”

7pm

McRoberts and Hayes head to Galbraiths to join their colleagues, “more Newshub lanyards than you could poke a stick at”.

McRoberts, who acknowledges he’s an emotional person, hasn’t cried all day.

“But we walked in and everyone cheered. That’s when I cried.”

It’s only day one. There’s much more to be said.

“It’s a shitty old time but we are helping each other through it and we are going to be ok,” says Daniel Rutledge. “But the legacy loss and fourth estate impact, yeah, that’s another story.”

For a later time.

I get a text reply from Michael Morrah, which sums up the mood for now. And the spirit.

“I’m devastated.

“But we’ll keep putting out the news. Until the lights go out.”