One journalist’s account of being told his worth

Sunday, 24 May 2026

Stewart Sowman-Lund’s media column, The Sunday Report - dissecting talking points from NZ media, entertainment and pop culture - appears weekly on Sundays on thepost.co.nz and in the Sunday Star-Times.

ANALYSIS: Performance reviews can be uncomfortable enough without being told there’s no more money to give you.

Even worse, as one journalist wrote about this week, being told your output just isn’t financially worthwhile for the company that employs you.

In a piece for his new Exit Strategy blog, that has since been widely read in media circles, former NZ Herald writer Greg Bruce described his worst pay review experience.

“The manager told me he had run the numbers on my clicks and conversions and calculated the financial value of my articles for the previous year at approximately $12,000, which left the company roughly $80,000 short in terms of ROI,” wrote Bruce.

In short, Bruce was not going to be getting a pay rise because the company had quantified his output for the year in black and white financial terms.

Speaking to the Sunday Star-Times, Bruce stood by his account of that meeting and said it was well understood by fellow reporters at the time that their work was being assessed in this manner.

“It was made clear to everybody … that articles were being valued, and there was a certain dollar amount that was attached to clicks and a certain dollar amount that was attached to conversions,” he says.

“That was explicitly told to me, and it was explicitly linked to why I was not getting a pay rise, that was quite shocking.”

It’s entirely feasible, if not probable, that other newsrooms are also thinking of the work by their journalists in terms of dollars and cents - it’s the reality of this modern era. But it’s certainly not something I’d ever want to know, nor do there seem many merits in being told this type of information.

Bruce, who was made redundant by the Herald last year during staff cuts, said it was confronting. “We live in the data world, and everything we write is so remorselessly measured.”

The Star-Times went to the Herald to ask whether it has a different recollection of this, and how it quantifies the value of its journalists, but did not hear back.

But Bruce says the response to his Substack piece, titled “The $12,000 journalist: Why I was a financial disaster for NZ’s biggest newspaper”, has been one of outrage.

“Brutal … depressing. People are shocked by it, which I find kind of validating,” Bruce says.

“It's kind of one of those things that when you're on the inside and you're living it, what's that saying, like, fish don't know what water is … it's the water we're swimming in, so we're just living it every day.”

Bruce, admittedly, says he has been “negative” about the state of journalism for some time. In his mind, the value of a journalist’s work should not be reduced to such an explicit dollar amount. But how exactly you should quantify the value they bring is a harder question to answer.

“I think things like engagement - you write an article that really resonates with people, and people will send you emails. If you're going to say a conversion is worth $100, what's an email worth?” asks Bruce.

“Because for somebody to actually write to you and say, I really love that, it resonated with me - it's a meaningful piece of engagement. [And] hatred, I think, is just as powerful and just as financially powerful and monetisable as love.”

It’s worth stating that this is not just an issue at one particular newspaper. Clicks are king across most outlets, with stories deemed successful based on the sugar hit that comes from seeing a spike in readers.

I’m no expert on engagement or analytics, but from my perspective the value of a journalist should surely come from something less easily quantifiable as clicks, and certainly should not be reduced to a pure financial value. Bruce, who has become the latest in a long line of journalists to start a Substack after leaving a newsroom, describes the experience of writing for himself as “liberating”.

“I wouldn't have made the decision to leave, I couldn't afford to, but there is something nice about being able to take control of your own work and do what you want, and see the results of that, and know that you're not being forced into some shitty data funnel to produce numbers that produce dollars - or don't produce dollars.”

Something that, as the news media continues to grapple with how to remain sustainable, we could all try and remember.

In other news …

What’s your favourite music venue?

It’s New Zealand Music Month, which means it’s time for me to guiltily admit I’ve barely left the house in the evening this month and certainly have not been to any live events.

I promise that’s not usually how I am, but right now it is.

So given it’s NZ Music Month, we asked three local artists for their favourite local music venues, and here’s what they said. Note: Some answers have been edited for brevity.

JessB: My fav Aotearoa music venue is Neck of The Woods. It was the first place I ever played a live gig, and was also the host venue for the party I started with my friend Half Queen called FILTH. In addition to a fire sound system, it is a venue that caters to so many different types of artists and genres. I’ve been to many gigs there both as an artist and a fan, and the staff have always prioritised creating a space that feels safe and welcoming to all. Long live NOTW!

Bic Runga: I have a lot of fondness for the Powerstation, it was always such a good place to play and to go and see bands in the central suburbs. I got to play there with Neil Finn's 7 Worlds Collide show when he collaborated with members of Radiohead, Wilco, KT Tunstall and with Neil’s family, it was such a dream gig for me. Shouts to Peter and the late beautiful Gabrielle for keeping this legendary venue alive.

**Finn Andrews *(The Veils):*** I have so much love for so many venues here: San Fran in Wellington gave us some of our favourite shows when we were young; likewise the now sadly extinct Kings Arms in Auckland. But the place that means the most to me is still The Bunker Folk Club in the now terrifyingly affluent suburb of Devonport, Auckland.

My favourite venue to listen to live music in Aotearoa is the Hollywood Cinema in Auckland, mostly because I'm middle-aged and prize sitting down a lot more than I used to. Intimate, yet always has the capacity to get rowdy and a bit unhinged. It's a brilliant place.

A reality TV reckoning

Very serious accusations in the world of reality TV this week, with two women involved in Married at First Sight (MAFS) UK going public with claims they were raped during filming of the show, while a third made allegations they were subject to a non-consensual sexual act.

All three women told British investigative show Panorama that they did not feel the reality programme had done enough to protect them during filming. The show has since been pulled from its UK streamer, with a new and already filmed season on indefinite hold. Here in New Zealand, local distributor SKY also removed all episodes of the show from its ThreeNow service in the wake of the news.

It’s also prompted many questions about the level of care provided to contestants on reality TV programmes such as this, and whether the show’s format encourages bad behaviour. Our local version of MAFS, which has been off the air for a while now, had its own scandal after it emerged one of the show’s grooms had an outstanding domestic violence charge in the US. MAFS NZ subsequently cut his entire storyline from the show.