Prominent Christchurch journalists pull back curtain on an ever-changing industry

Sunday, 13 April 2025

Two years after launching a dedicated website, The Press editor Kamala Hayman says she loves focusing on stories our community cares about.

“I absolutely love that we can tell the stories of our communities without having to consider whether Aucklanders are interested in what we are writing about or not.”

Hayman was speaking in front of more than 100 people at The Piano in Christchurch on Sunday, as part of an Our Kiwi Home live session with Mark Walton, along with veteran investigative journalist Martin van Beynen.

The pair completed the same journalism course at the University of Canterbury, although van Beynen pointed out he was the “old boy” in the class at the age of 31.

Hayman became editor of The Press in 2018 following nearly 20 years reporting at the newspaper and a decade working in the UK.

She said she was incredibly lucky to be editor.

For the past two years, The Press has been establishing its own identity away from the Stuff website, after finding itself part of “this big machine that is Stuff”, Hayman said.

While print newspaper subscriptions are in decline, subscriptions to The Press online are growing well, she said.

“It’s a hard message for us because for 20 years we gave our news away for free online. We thought if we had big audiences the advertising would follow, but it hasn’t.

“The advertisers have gone to Facebook and Google and YouTube. We’ve had to rethink that strategy. It boils down to, we need readers who value the news to pay for it. It’s not the message we have told for the last 20 years.”

Hayman also said balance was really important and while The Press was often criticised for a perception of being unbalanced, complaints came from across the political spectrum.

“There is a kind of sense some people think a story is balanced if they agree with every word of it.”

Van Beynen, who recently stepped back from a full-time role to write a weekly Friday column in The Press, said journalists were much more accountable for their own stories these days.

Looking back on his 34-year career at the newspaper, he said he was essentially writing the same stories, but the sub-editors who used to correct any mistakes were gone.

Now reporters have to produce a finished article, write the headline, choose the photographs and write the captions.

There is also more contact with the editor today, he said.

When van Beynen first started, he only talked to the editor once in the first three years and that was only when he received a “bollocking” over a story.

Back then, there were also a number of people “swanning around who never wrote a story, and no-one seemed to care”.

There was a competition at another newspaper, which van Beynen refused to name, to see how long someone could go without writing a story before being noticed. It was six weeks.

Journalism has improved in many ways, he said.

“People talk about the good old days, but there were not any good old days. We had lots of money, but we did not use it wisely.”

The Press is now a very lean organisation, he said.

When asked if the cases he had covered over the years, including David Bain, had kept him awake at night, van Beynen said no, but the fear of making a mistake did.

When investigating someone for a story that is going to potentially ruin their life, he said you cannot afford to make mistakes.

“Sometimes I go to bed thinking, ‘it’s been legalled, I’ve done my best, but maybe I’ve made a mistake’. That is the only thing that keeps me awake.”