Stuff consultation closes as union names the 18 regional newsroom roles at risk

Staff consultation on Stuff's plan to cut regional newsroom jobs has closed. The journalists' union E tū has now listed the jobs at risk: four reporters, four visual journalists, five print producers, a designer and four other newsroom roles. That makes 18.

The breakdown appeared in the NZ Herald's Media Insider column, in which Stuff journalists appealed through E tū to save the jobs. The union doesn't say what the four "other newsroom roles" are. The Herald is owned by Stuff's rival NZME, and Stuff's comments to the Herald neither confirm nor dispute the figure.

A Stuff spokeswoman told the Herald: "Staff feedback on this proposal only closed today, and we will now take the time to carefully consider and respond to that before any final decisions are made."

E tū's case is about what would be left. "If the cuts go ahead, many districts will be left with just two reporters, and whole regions with a single photographer," the union said. "All but one of the regional print producers would go. They are the last people to check for mistakes before the paper goes to print."

E tū said the roving regional reporting team would be halved to two. The reporters left would start writing for Neighbourly News, Stuff's new hyper-local feed, which the union says relies heavily on AI.

Louisa Steyl, a Southland Times reporter and E tū member, said the paper would have three reporters to cover 34,000 square kilometres. "There is a deep moral injury in having to tell people we can't cover their stories – stories that are important to them – because we don't have the resources we once did," she said in a statement released by E tū.

At the Manawatū Standard, the proposal would cut visual journalists from two to one. Warwick Smith, a visual journalist there and an E tū member, called that "untenable". He said Stuff tried it three years ago and it proved unworkable. During a hiring freeze he worked alone for six months, often doing 12-hour days. The Standard's patch takes in Palmerston North and its 90,000 people. It runs from Whanganui to Taihape, east to Dannevirke and Eketāhuna, and south to Ōtaki.

E tū said the proposal "doesn't touch the number of pages or print days, only the number of people". The union also said that less than a week after announcing the cuts, Stuff began advertising for copywriters to write sponsored content for the same papers.

"A Facebook group can tell you there's a pothole. A reporter asks why it's been there for six months, what the council promised, and who made the call," said Mat Danaher, E tū's assistant national secretary. "Keeping the name on the masthead means nothing if there's no one left to write the paper."

"Government, and local government too, must evaluate their role in the importance of local journalism as the costs of paper, print, energy and distribution of newspapers rise significantly," the Stuff spokeswoman said. Stuff said last month it had recently launched 18 hyper-local news websites through Neighbourly News. It still publishes 13 daily and weekly newspapers and two monthly rural titles.

The same column cites a Koi Tū think-tank paper by Gavin Ellis, a former NZ Herald editor-in-chief, which says NZME and Stuff have closed about 40 community newspaper titles in the past seven years. The column also cites a 2024 Spinoff survey that estimated New Zealand had about 1400 journalists left. Central Hawke's Bay has had no local news outlet since the CHB Mail closed.