Accessible News

Top storiesNew ZealandPoliticsBusinessEntertainmentSportsWorld

With billionaire media owners, things can be rosy, until they’re not

Friday, 7 March 2025

NZME HQ in central Auckland, which is the subject of speculation over a potential board clean-out by a wealthy Canadian shareholder.
NZME HQ in central Auckland, which is the subject of speculation over a potential board clean-out by a wealthy Canadian shareholder.

Dr Merja Myllylahti is co-director at the AUT research centre for Journalism, Media and Democracy (JMAD). She is also leading the centre’s annual Trust in News in Aotearoa New Zealand research project.

OPINION: NZME, one of our largest news publishers, may be facing a battle. An Auckland-based Canadian billionaire Jim Grenon has bought almost a 10% stake in the NZ Herald publisher and has begun the process of getting rid of the current board.

It is hard to know Grenon’s end game plan as he has not stated it, but what he does may have serious ramifications for NZME and our news industry.

We know that he wants a board seat, but what else? You can legitimately question why anyone wants to buy media assets at a time when most of the publishers are struggling to make money and people are actively avoiding the news. Internationally, news subscriptions have also stalled.

A photo of Canadian-NZ businessman and NZME shareholder Jim Grenon, at left, taken from his company’s website.
A photo of Canadian-NZ businessman and NZME shareholder Jim Grenon, at left, taken from his company’s website.

Having billionaires toying with media assets is nothing new. We have had super wealthy people and media barons as owners in the past.

In 2012, Australian mining billionaire Gina Rinehart became the biggest shareholder in Fairfax Media with an18.7% stake. Fairfax Media owned the then Dominion Post in Wellington and The Press in Christchurch.

While many speculated at the time that Rinehart would make a full takeover bid of Fairfax Media, she never did. She eventually got rid of the shares.

In 2014, Rupert Murdoch also held almost a 15% stake in APN News & Media, owner of the NZ Herald at the time. Later on, he sold his shares.

Rupert Murdoch, perhaps the most famous of the current era’s media barons, has come and gone from the ranks of shareholders in New Zealand’s media industry.
Rupert Murdoch, perhaps the most famous of the current era’s media barons, has come and gone from the ranks of shareholders in New Zealand’s media industry.

Some people are questioning whether Grenon is trying to take over NZME, but the company’s stock market announcement says that “there is no current intention to make a takeover bid”.

It has been speculated that Grenon wants NZME for ideological reasons. He was previously a company director of The Centrist, a news website that is offering “under-served perspectives while emphasising reason-based analysis, even if it might be too hot for mainstream media to handle”.

Where Grenon sits politically and ideologically is difficult to know since he has not clearly articulated it. But one has to wonder, is he going to push the NZ Herald to the right?

Amazon founder and Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos, whose recent edict about opinion content in the American newspaper have cost it dearly in terms of subcriptions.
Amazon founder and Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos, whose recent edict about opinion content in the American newspaper have cost it dearly in terms of subcriptions.

We just received data for the next Trust in News in Aotearoa New Zealand report which I co-author. The (as-yet) unpublished data shows that a majority of NZ Herald readers sit at the centre left, centre and centre right on the political spectrum (55%). Approximately 28% of the papers readers are on the right. Of those who trust the NZ Herald, 15% are on the left and 15% on the right of the political spectrum.

Pushing the paper too far right (or hypothetically too left) could be costly. Moving too right or too left could alienate some readers, leading to a decline in subscriptions.

Consider what happened to The Washington Post. The former editor of the paper, Martin Baron, says that while its owner Jeff Bezos “handled his ownership admirably for more than a decade”, his recent actions have left the paper’s reputation in tatters, eroding its trust.

When Bezos recently banned his newsroom from publishing any opinion articles that don’t align with his ideology of “personal liberties and free markets”, it led to the mass cancellation of subscriptions. According to NPR, The Washington Post lost more than 75,000 people as a consequence.

It is good to remember that billionaire media owners do not equal monetary success. In 2023, The Washington Post lost US$77 million. Additionally, the paper just recently announced that it was cutting a further 100 employees.

When we add to the mix investment companies and private equity firms, things get somewhat scary. These companies are not inherently interested in media business or journalism, they invest in assets to make a profit.

NZME has plenty of these as shareholders. Along with Grenon, Osmium Partners owns 6.57% of the company’s shares, and is also proposing two new directors to the company’s board.

As Margot Susca outlines in her book, private investment funds have been at the centre of destroying the American newspaper industry. Private equity firms such as Alden Global Capital have chopped newsroom jobs, closed down newspapers and sold assets to the extent that the democratic function of journalism has become under threat.