Substack and Crux: A safe haven in New Zealand's upcoming media war with Meta and Google
Proposed NZ Government legislation plans to fight with Google and Meta on a battleground already shown to be unsuccessful in Australia and Canada.
By Peter Newport: Managing Editor, Crux.
There is a lot of debate about the future of news – all over the world. We all know the issues – misinformation, click bait, plummeting revenue streams, changing audience behaviour, everyone’s an expert with their own platform – the list goes on.
We are lucky with our own rapidly growing news platform, Crux, in the South Island of New Zealand. Our unique brand of tough, hyper local journalism resonates with the community and our analytics show we are the market leader in terms of audience size, engagement and growth.
But, and it’s a very big but, in the current topsy turvy world of news publishing being the biggest and the best does not equal revenue.
Print advertising continues to consume valuable dollars through local council spend, legacy relationships with ad agencies and generally older business owners who simply like to see their name in print. And of course, a lot (most) of digital advertising dollars go direct to the large social media platforms like Meta, Google and TikTok.
We are constantly adapting and changing our digital advertising inventory using maximum innovation. That will help.
But the signs are that both Meta and Google will withdraw the ability for New Zealand news content to be published on their platforms. That will apply to all news platforms and is likely to even extend to local council and other public services.
To be 100% clear we currently consider both Google and Meta as positive partners in our business. We get some funding from the Google Showcase programme and the Google News Initiative has been a constant and invaluable support mechanism over recent years. Meta produces a huge part of our audience funnel (60% of website traffic) and it’s a natural extension of our content. We also benefited from the funding and knowledge that came with the Meta Accelerator programme a couple of years ago.
The reason that we might now be forced to break these partnerships? Our current Government’s decision to push through media legislation that will try to force these global platforms to the bargaining table so that they can contribute substantial funding to NZ news media.
The bottom line is that neither Google nor Meta plan to enter into any New Zealand bargaining process. Add to that the fact that most news platforms, like us, rely on Google and Meta to maintain and grow their audiences, then we have a crisis of epic proportions just around the corner.
Ignoring the rights and wrongs of the Government’s strategy, the practical implications could be fatal for many aspects of New Zealand journalism.
Our response at Crux has been swift. We sadly need to get our audience away from Meta and Google into a separate non-political environment where our audience can grow and be offered premium content and high-quality relevant advertising.
Our strategy is to keep all news content on the Crux website free for everyone to read. That still grows audience size and fits with the democratic purpose of public interest journalism. We are putting all of our newsletters and podcasts, plus all future premium content, onto Substack.
Substack, co-founded by Kiwi
, was originally designed to help individual authors and journalists find an audience and monetise their work. It’s a publishing platform with lots of clever ways to keep readers happy, safe, engaged and connected.It’s now evolved into something even more clever. It’s rapidly become a safe harbour for small to medium size publishers who crave a better relationship with their audience.
Substack is now a better-curated place for comments as well. Our existing audience thrives on social media comments, but we’ve always had our hands full with the Facebook trolls, conspiracy theorists and “this isn’t news” brigade. As our audience has grown so has the task of managing these social media comments.
Substack allows comments from all Crux subscribers, free or paid. But we can change Substack settings, and we have email addresses, so we know who everybody is. There’s no ability for anonymous toxic comments to spoil what’s an otherwise important public platform for personal views and perspectives.
Substack also is built around newsletters – lots of them. Clever newsletters that can easily be targeted at different audience segments. Substack also makes it easy for readers to experience and appreciate premium content, giving everyone the chance to upgrade from a free to a paid subscription whenever they are ready.
There’s also a special place for podcasts on Substack, while still giving producers like Crux the ability to publish to Apple Podcasts and Spotify.
There's also a special feature in Substack that attempts to prevent Artificial Intelligence (AI) systems from learning and copying content without our permission.
It might seem an overly dramatic statement, but we see our move to Substack as heading down to an underground bunker when a very large and destructive tornado is about to hit town.
We think the pressure on our New Zealand Government has come substantially from legacy print media (the News Publishers Association) who simply want a large amount of cash. They are 100% correct in saying that we need that money, but blaming Meta and Google for "stealing market share" or "taking advantage of news content" is a bit like blaming lions for being lions, or sharks being sharks - or even saying the "internet is to blame."
Sharks, lions and the internet are all dangerous, and sometimes useful, in their own way - but the smart answer is probably not to poke them all with a sharp stick hoping for a happy outcome.
An alternate New Zealand plan for a levy on all digital advertising is a far better idea and is one that Meta and Google, we believe, could live with. That solution would also take the politics out of the entire problem - the aim of every Government.
Thanks Substack for providing an alternative in this (avoidable) battle to come.