I’m not going to sugarcoat it, the last few weeks have been extremely hectic. Nexus, Uni, and having a 21st or a gig every fucking weekend really start to thin you out. It’s part of life though, and it’s helped me develop a routine again. Not waking up at 11am every morning never felt so good. I could go on about this and how my life is going at the moment, but I think that would be boring, and whoever is reading this probably couldn’t give less of a fuck. So I’m going to have a whinge instead, and I think I will whinge about mainstream media or politics today. I’ll try and make it interesting, because it would be kind of awkward if I decided a topic was too boring then decided to move to another boring topic.

I’ll start with The Herald. There are a few reasons why I don’t like them. The amount of gutter journalism I see on the internet nowadays is absolutely ridiculous, no one cares that Jay Jay Feeney is on Tinder, or that Max Key’s parents helped him buy his first home. It’s not journalism, you couldn’t even call it gossip. It’s just things about people’s personal lives that don’t need to be published in the public arena. I suppose there will always be that 48 year old mum in Parnell who starts chomping at the bit and sends it to the group chat of fellow mums when these types of articles pop up. And they will always publish that sort of stuff to gather up whatever clicks they can muster from that age group.

Another issue I have with them is their grammar. Before you harp on about Nexus having mistakes in it, we usually edit a hard copy of the magazine before we send it to print so it is difficult to pick up every single mistake. However, I’m calling out the journalists who are writing and editing their pieces in a computer program that points out any mistakes they’ve made. It’s actually not uncommon to read an article with 3 or 4 basic spelling errors in it. It’s led me to believe that they don’t actually sub edit their writing, or just don’t know how to spell. It’s punishing that this is a common occurrence in one of New Zealand’s media giants.

I’m not going to pay for their premium articles either, until they’re at least worth it. Just the other day I saw an article posted about Todd Muller and him speaking out about his mental health for the first time since resigning as the National Party leader. I was really keen to read it, but of course it’s a premium article. Yes, it’s only $5. But the concept of blocking out readers with a paywall on an article that would really help people learn about the struggle with mental health really struck a nerve with me. Call me a stinge, but I just massively disagree with making coin off someone’s mental health. Don’t even get me started on the fact that if you don’t have a premium account, it says “support great journalism” at the bottom. Come back to me when your journalism is worth paying for, until then I will be getting my scoops exclusively from The BFD.

Josh Umbers