by Karl du Fresne from his blog
Stuff has announced the appointment of a new editor for the Dominion Post. Caitlin Cherry will replace Anna Fifield, who is returning to the Washington Post as its Asia-Pacific editor.
Cherry, who will start in February, has spent most of her career with RNZ in behind-the-scenes roles on news and current affairs programmes, including Morning Report and Nine to Noon. She currently has the title of Head of Content at Consumer NZ.
What’s most striking about her appointment is that judging by her LinkedIn profile, she has never worked for a daily newspaper – in fact appears to have no print experience of any sort. Yet she’s taking over the leadership of what used to be one of the country’s most influential mastheads.
This could be a move so bold and visionary that its brilliance isn’t immediately obvious. On the other hand it could be just plain dumb.
It could be interpreted as confirmation that Stuff isn’t really interested in print and possibly regards it as a dinosaur medium in the digital era. The company has often given the impression, intentionally or otherwise, that it regards its newspapers as an encumbrance.
Alternatively the appointment could be taken as yet another indication that Stuff doesn’t have a clue what it’s doing. When a puzzled former colleague of mine asked whether anyone knew what the company’s overall strategy was, the only answer I could think of was “slow-motion suicide”. But I hope my bleak assessment is wrong — because for all Stuff’s missteps, hundreds of journalists still depend on it for a living.
Ms Fifield (see earlier posts) has only lasted a bit over two years in her role with Ms Boucher’s company — has the latter indicated a forthcoming pay cut? Or is Ms Fifield apprehensive about the company’s longevity? Whichever, it won’t be concern over the company’s unethical and untruthful behaviour; the Washington Post is no better. —Eds
Just another government whore then?
Yes another Presstitute, who must have been offered a lot more than she gets now.
Whores are as whores do…
I watched & tried to listen to Ms Fifield BS @ the last Nelson Tasman Chamber of Commerce Aspire conference here in Nelson. It was so bad, shall we say untruthful, I did not even bother claiming the IoD CPD points available, rather, gave away an hour of my life. I suspect given her background she was most probably too erudite for the role, & do not doubt for a moment the screws are being applied @ Stuff with eight journalists here in Nelson being reduced to 3 next year, the writing is on the wall. The Nelson Mail we received today was absolute rubbish, snippets from the Chch Press I suspect mostly… Interesting, & sad really, as she told us she was coming home as a preferred career move… I also suggest she has seen the writing on the wall with the Ardern slush fund will be gone come elections next year & probably easier to go now…
The denigration of printed matter is, I believe to help us become comfortable with our appalling literacy rates this century in NZ. Marie Clay’s absurd reading ideas have been well exposed , at last, by Emily Hanford in a podcast ‘Sold a Story’.
Astonishingly, Clay’s ideas have now proved not to be a reading method at all, but a presence, producing something that looks like reading but isn’t .Once books with pictures ,simple repetitive sentences and one or two syllable words constructed for beginning students disappear from texts designed for eight year old readers many children of that age can’t cope. They give up and dislike reading.
With an increased percentage of the population having a reading age about or less than eight years, of course we are going to have to adjust to alternatives to print
Literacy, with a variety of definitions, is the cunning new term euphemistically replacing reading print.