Delightful, Delicious Diwali!

Posted on October 15, 2013 by Andrew Frame

Diwali , or the “Festival of Lights” is an Indian festival celebrating the triumph of good over evil, light over darkness. Hawke’s Bay’s Indian community has been celebrating it at Napier’s Sound Shell for several years now.

It’s a free event and has a great, friendly, family atmosphere that easily attracts hundreds and hundreds of people – young and old of all ethnicities each year. It’s the sort of event that Napier has been so sadly missing out on in recent years.

There’s dancing, great music (so good, you’ll probably recognize riffs and beats that most main-stream rap musicians have flogged and hoped no-one (aside from maybe one billion Indians) would notice) and FOOD!

Lots and lots of delicious samosas, satays and curries are served from a number of stalls. This year Napier’s Indigo Restaurant, had the consistently longest queue.

It took about half an hour to reach the business-end of dinner, but when you got there it was certainly worth it – $10 for a traditional Indian meal in such a great open-air environment with free entertainment! Try and beat that, “Great Long Lunch”!

I happened to see Napier’s Inner City Marketing Manager at the event. I certainly hope she was taking notes, because NICM could learn a heck of a lot from a great family festival like this. Napier needs and deserves a lot more like it!

Dickensian Dickens Street

Posted on October 14, 2013 by Andrew Frame

What Would Charles Dickens Make of the Napier Street named after him?

Is Napier’s Dickens Street becoming literally more and more Dickensian?

There were Great Expectations for Dickens Street after its revitalisation a few years ago, but it appears to be going through some Hard Times.

At its Hastings Street end we have a noisy, smelly and dusty industrial revolution of construction and destruction.

At the other end we have the squalor of the still half-empty and abandoned Mid City Plaza – a Bleak House going mouldy on the outside and crumbling inside, while across the road a store sells “legal” highs to local street urchins.

Now I see a giant “$2 Shop”-type store opening in the middle of Dickens Street (there are already around three such stores in close proximity).

This is no Old Curiosity Shop – rather an immense purveyor of too-cheap goods – the sort poor little Oliver Twist had to make for a pittance.

Another of these ‘bargain’ stores is not encouraging for central Napier’s growth, retail quality or the region’s reputation for low wages. You have to wonder who let it get in this state?

With festive season fast approaching, we can only hope those letting our CBD down hear an inspirational Christmas Carol or have a life-changing dream and stop being such Scrooges!

Price Does Not Equal Luxury

Posted on September 11, 2013 by Andrew Frame

“See Naples and die.” Pompeii tourist brochure circa 79AD

“See Napier and Spit*” Mark Twain, Napier’s Masonic Hotel 1895

Napier’s tourism industry has been struggling for some years now.

Some blame too much focus on cruise ships for the decline. Others blame Napier City Council for not doing enough to Marine Parade, or the uncooperative relationship that exists between Hawke’s Bay’s many councils. HB Inc. / Venture HB / HB Tourism (if you’re new to the region they’re all the same organisation with mainly the same staff, just under different names after years of reorganisation or failure) have also faced their share of criticism. As has Air New Zealand (have you tried finding a cheap flight to or from Hawke’s Bay – one of New Zealand’s busiest regional airports?).

I feel most of these criticisms have their merits. But I have seen a theme run through a lot of Hawke’s Bay tourism schemes and advertising in recent years that may be doing even more damage: Luxury.

When times are tough and money is sparse (as it is currently), what is the first thing you usually give up? The “luxuries”! So why is that such a feature of so many HB tourism ventures recently? Sure they are attractive to a select few for their exclusivity (“ponce-pulling-power”?), but as a result they also cater to only a very small portion of the market for only a small amount of time.

From an accommodation perspective, take the likes of the Kidnappers resort (scarily expensive to mere mortals like myself), or closer to home The Dome in central Napier (don’t even get me started on how our Art Deco-mad rulers let them build a modern addition atop one of Napier’s most iconic buildings…). Both make a point of being exclusive and luxurious. But, at even their cheapest winter rates, how many people will ever get to know precisely how luxurious they are? They also appear geared towards just individuals or couples too. The typical middle-income-earning Kiwi family holidaymakers, surely Hawke’s Bay’s biggest and most lucrative domestic market, don’t get much of a look-in. But I guess that’s the whole point, right? It’s a case of the money versus the many.

Case in point: Kidnappers hosted an event with international celebrity chef, Heston Blumenthal, a few years ago. For the price of a ticket to this event (a night or two’s accommodation and accompanying meals) you could have flown to England, dined at Heston’s original restaurant, The Fat Duck, spent a few more days seeing the sights and still had change for duty free on the return to New Zealand! Somehow the event still sold out. I’m guessing not many locals bought tickets.

I wonder how long these types of venture usually last (I think at least one of the two examples I mentioned above has changed owners at some stage)? If one night’s accommodation is that pricey, and guest nights must be pretty slim as a result, imagine what their running costs must be.

I make this point about longevity, because two of Napier’s most popular and longest standing holiday accommodation providers, Kennedy Park Camp Grounds and the iconic central Napier Criterion Backpackers hostel are not only some of the city’s oldest establishments (Kennedy Park celebrated a whopping 75 years of operation recently and “The Cri” was built after the 1931 Earthquake, ironically, as a luxury hotel), but also some of the cheapest!

Accommodation providers are stuck between a rock and a hard place, though. The less people staying with them, the more they have to charge to make ends meet. But the more they charge, the fewer customers are inclined to spend the night. It’s a vicious cycle.

One of the cosiest hotel beds I have ever slept in was at the Jucy Hotel / Hostel, just 200 meters from Queen Street in Auckland. The rooms were quiet, bright and modern. They had great new facilities, a flat screen TV, a modern stylish bathroom and cost just over $100 including a carpark for the night. Where else could you find value for money like that in New Zealand’s biggest city, or even Napier for that matter?

The popularity and longevity of Kennedy Park and the Cri Backpackers and my experience at Jucy prove that money can’t always buy you a good night’s place to rest.

A high price does not equal luxury!

Rather than go for the ‘vanity factor’ and charging accordingly, ultimately scaring potential clients off, I think Napier Hoteliers / Moteliers need to go back to the basics. Provide a comfortable, family-orientated place to stay at an attractive price. The reduction in individual price will pay off in spades, as more guests stay for longer.

With the summer tourist season fast approaching, I wonder how many operators will try it?

*The “Spit” Mr Twain refers to is now the area we call “Westshore”. Pre-1931 earthquake, it was a long, thin spit of land at the entrance to the then harbour, now Ahuriri fishing port.

Hosting a “Tweetup” 101

Posted on August 1, 2013 by Andrew Frame

A Tweet Little Gathering!

To many people Twitter and other social media are viewed as quite a sterile, distant, disconnected form of communication. But they don’t have to be!

One of my favourite aspects of Hawke’s Bay’s large and vibrant Twitter community is the reasonably regular “Tweetups” we have.

A Tweetup is a get-together, or meet-up for local twitterers. It’s great getting to meet in person all the people you have been conversing with across the World Wide Web.

I’ve been to maybe half a dozen #HBTweetups, so while the long winter nights were taking their toll last month, I decided to organise one myself. Below is my step-by-step guide to organising / hosting your own Tweetup!

Step One: Find a Location
Most of the Tweetups I’ve been to have been at restaurants or bars. It makes sense really – they’re relaxed social venues with the added benefit of food and drink, but I’ve also heard of fish and chip Tweetups on the beach and others at bigger venues with themed parties, etc.

Newly opened or refurbished establishments and those just entering the social media world are often on the lookout for ways to get their brand out into the Twittersphere, so they can be quite receptive to hosting such events. A venue that has wifi access is a bonus too, as it allows live tweets from the Tweetup.

From what I’ve experienced the venue will often provide finger food and the first drink on the house. But this varies from place to place and can quite often be offset by getting attendees to stay for dinner, or join a loyalty programme the venue may be doing. It works out pretty win-win either way. You or the hosting venue might even decide to offer spot prizes, or something similar to sweeten the deal for guests.

The hardest part I found of negotiating hosting a Tweetup is you can never be too sure of how many people will come. Sometimes you will get positive responses from 30 people and only 12 will turn up to the event. You can also have 20 people respond and end up with 50 on the day, as word gets around. You may find yourself using the words “ballpark figure” quite a bit.

In my case, I tweeted Grant from Napier’s new Viceroy Hotel and Delmonico’s Bistro & Wine Bar and set up a meeting to discuss the possibility of them hosting a Tweetup. Grant was very positive and we set a date. Around three weeks lead-in gives you enough time to get the word out and RSVPs back and get things organised, while still being close enough to attract and keep interest.

Step Two: Get the Word Out
Prepare to Tweet and #Hashtag like you’ve never Tweeted and #Hashtaged before!

The easiest way to get things started is to Tweet about it. Adding a “#” (Hashtag) with the events name (Hawke’s Bay Tweetups usually use the Hashtag “#HBTweetup”) is a good place to start. You can track people’s comments and responses using Twitter’s search function and typing in your event’s Hashtag name.

Another way is setting up the event through a site like Twitvite, where people can RSVP and see the details of the Tweetup, like we did here.

Now spend the next two weeks sending out general or targeted (@ all the local people you’d like to attend) tweets with links to your Twitvite page, hashtaging and generally promoting the living snot out of your Tweetup. Don’t be surprised if you wake up in the middle of the night screaming “Tweetup!” at some stage during this time, it’s perfectly normal.

Step Three: The Big Day – Enjoy!
You would have confirmed final numbers with the host a day or two before the event for catering purposes and organised any extra bits and pieces that may be required, so all you can do now is sit back and relax! (cigar, slippers and satin smoking jacket optional).

A “Tweet-wall” is a neat feature where those at the Tweetup and those who wish they were can have their tweets displayed usually via a data projector onto a screen. Hawke’s Bay digital wizards Mogul have an application called “Strea.ma” that is set up for just such a purpose. Check it out – it’s very cool and interactive!

Most of all enjoy yourself (and don’t forget to invite me)!

Give HB Youth a Chance!

Posted on July 28, 2013 by Andrew Frame

It often feels like anyone in Napier under the age of 40 gets ignored. Baby-boomers rule and everyone else can just fend for themselves.

As a result, we annually lose generations of our bright and talented youth to other parts of New Zealand and the world. A few return in later life with their families, most never do. This creates not only a great gulf in the age bracket, earning Hawke’s Bay it’s sunny ‘Retirement village’ image, but also major cultural and economic holes in the region.

Local organisations and authorities do little to help the situation, or empower youth as I wrote in my second Napier in Frame blog post.

When it comes to looking after Napier youth’s needs or allocating them some form of infrastructure, N.C.C.’s solution to date has been “build a skate-park!” Ho-hum! Where are the events, concerts, expos and exhibitions? When was the last time a Mission Concert featured an act that was at the top of the music charts during the lifetime of an average 25 year old?

Napier City Council’s recent “Big Picture” plan to turn Marine Parade (which they completely ignored for the past 20 years) into a “Kids’ Capital” featured some ideas with merit, like the wave park, but others like the cable-ski facility (cable ski = lots of metal. Lots of metal + salty sea air = big, continuous repair bills) were doomed from conception. Besides, tourist attractions and children’s playgrounds won’t keep our school-leavers in Napier.

This is a problem that has been nagging at me for years. I never left Hawke’s Bay for university, a career or global migration after high school. I stayed here, living and working in what I still consider one of the best places in the world. It has had its advantages, but also some major disadvantages.

Over the past decade the major drawbacks have been few career opportunities within the region and poor pay. Hawke’s Bay’s economy has suffered because of these factors and the poor economy has depressed wages and career opportunities even more. We need to break this cycle.

Paul Dutch and Rod Drury had a good exchange on keeping our school leavers in Hawke’s Bay in the comments section of an item on the wave park development over at the Fruitbowl website.

Paul had some good ideas on keeping Hawke’s Bay youth empowered, employed and engaged in Hawke’s Bay. While I respect Rod and all his achievements with Xero, I feel some of his comments encapsulated what it wrong with a lot of Hawke’s Bay businesses and older people’s attitude to the region’s “Lost Generations” of 20-somethings:

“It’s really hard to keep people in their 20’s in the Bay. Be great if we could, but there are easier places to focus where we swim with the tide.”

“The growth from targeting these segments (parents, high value call centres, food and agriculture and retirees) will create opportunities for those in their 20’s. But personally I think that’s hard and we should focus on attracting our diaspora later in their careers after they’ve had their world wide experiences.”

I don’t consider continuing to put this problem in the “too hard basket” and hoping Hawke’s Bay’s bright and talented young one day return to be an option any longer. Somebody needs to take a stand and do something about it. But who?

Certainly not Tukituki MP and Minister of Commerce Craig Foss, who doesn’t seem to mind that his region has some of the lowest wages, and fewest high value job opportunities in New Zealand, as he seems to think living in Hawke’s Bay makes up for it all. Um, no. Would Mr Foss be so happy with the situation if any of his children chose to stay in the Bay, rather than go to university or travel and end up stuck in a low paying retail or café job? I don’t imagine so.

Rod Drury’s Xero is a successful, global company. But one thing Mr Drury fears (I read this in a special CEO lift-out in the Herald this week) was his company losing its “start-up feel”. Start-ups are often skin-of-the-teeth operations. Someone starts with an idea and builds a business from it. People using their raw talent and skills – often without tertiary qualifications. I really admire people who can do that – I’m not sure I could.

The technology industry is one of the main benefactors and biggest earners of start-up thinking and business. Just look at Facebook. Typically, modern start-ups are often begun by people in their late teens and early twenties, just the segment Hawke’s Bay is missing out on!

We need to target these high-value tech companies and foster such start-ups to set up operations in Hawke’s Bay. Especially with web-based content, where global work can be done from pretty much anywhere in the world, so why not Napier?

With our youth being so tech-savvy (can’t figure out how to use your new phone or computer? Just ask any 10 year old) school-leavers would be ideal employment candidates. Pay them more than the local retail of hospitality industry (it shouldn’t be too hard), provide some on the job training and boom, instant workforce and all-round benefits to Hawke’s Bay’s economy!

This isn’t asking for preferential treatment for Hawke’s Bay’s school leavers and 20-somethings. This is about giving them the opportunity to stay in their home towns if they want to and at the same time creating real, well paying career opportunities and boosting our regions flagging economy. Doing nothing is no longer an option. It’s time we did something about it.

Educating Isn’t Working

Posted on July 17, 2013 by Andrew Frame

I’ve written about this before elsewhere, but the topic just won’t seem to go away and because “Concrete11” called it “An accurate and because of that rare article” here I go again:

Mark Twain once said, “I never let my education get in the way of my learning.” Some of the world’s richest and most successful business men (Bill Gates and Sir Richard Branson to name two) dropped out of tertiary study and earned their millions through practical experience. So why are New Zealand’s youth, after up to 13 years of institutional education, still encouraged (or railroaded?) into pursuing tertiary education and burdening themselves with often crippling levels of debt?

For the record I have never been to university. I don’t have a degree, or a student loan. My highest qualification is a Diploma in Marketing (one year’s full time study) from the Eastern Institute of Technology in Napier, from which I have not gained a single ‘marketable’ job from in the 15 years since I achieved it (I have, however, managed to pay off the student loan I took out to take the course). Whether this makes my opinions more or less valid (or biased) I don’t know, but here goes.

When I finished high school in 1995, the only thing I wanted to do was become a radio announcer, and I was, part-time and on-the-job-trained, for all of six months. But I was in the minority. Virtually every other member of my seventh form year went off to university; it was just what you did (and what you still do?), primary, intermediate, high school, university, work. But I didn’t know what I would do at university. The one thing I did know was that I didn’t want to spend three years studying something I wasn’t committed to and be burdened with a $30,000+ debt, to find at the end of those three years I still didn’t know what I wanted to do, or the job I had worked towards wasn’t there.

New Zealand’s media industry is a great example of where those being trained for a specific profession are being failed by the system. Every year hundreds of young people with dreams of becoming the next Jay Jay, Mike, or Dom go to broadcasting schools around the country. With such a small employment base, as simulcast national radio networks employ a minimum number of announcers for a maximum amount of profit, very few can achieve their dream. That’s a hell of a waste of talent, not to mention a waste of thousands of dollars in student loans all for nought.

There have been dozens of news items over the last year showing little has changed in 18 years. Hundreds of tertiary graduates leave New Zealand each year because the jobs they trained for just aren’t there. One focus was on teaching, where far more students were studying the ‘glamour subjects’ of Physical Education or English (who had to go overseas to find work) and too few were studying to teach Maths and Physics.
How much influence do universities, polytechnics and institutes of technology like EIT have on the courses they provide versus the jobs that are currently, or foreseeably available in the near future (most big businesses plan finances and projects 3-5 years in the future, so it can’t be too hard). Currently it appears they could be a lot more responsible in identifying workforce needs and setting subjects and class sizes accordingly. But I don’t see them being too willing to turn down the $30,000+ cash(cow) injection per student.

And where does the on-going qualification versus experience debate currently stand? When I was job-hunting many years ago, qualifications far outweighed experience. More recently, practical experience has become far more attractive in potential employees, but you can’t get experience without a job, and all too often you can’t get that job without a qualification.

I don’t like debt. If I owe anyone anything, from money to favours, I like to pay it back as soon as possible. So I’m inclined to draw a link between the readiness with which our young people have come to continue their education supported by student loans and a reliance on credit cards, overdrafts and other forms of debt later in life often jeopardising their ability to save money, or affecting their ability to purchase their own home. High levels of personal debt have become endemic in our economy (and world’s) and it puts us in the current economic state we face.

I would like to see a major increase in the number of schools, tertiary institutions and businesses offering apprentice-style, on-the-job training. Regions like Hawke’s Bay shouldn’t have to lose all their talented young people each year to the bigger centres (and overseas) for training and / or work. Our younger generations deserve a chance to stay in their hometowns where a good, skilled, well paying job, unlike the current low-paying retail and hospitality options, would be a real possibility.

1931 – The Exhibit?

Posted on July 17, 2013 by Andrew Frame

Many years ago (sometime around 2001) I was working at Dymocks Booksellers in Napier during Art Deco Weekend when I met a very interesting customer. He worked for Weta Workshops in the design side of things and was visiting Napier for the event.

We got talking about the 1931 Napier Earthquake, as the excellent book “Quake” by Matthew Wright had just been released. In particular we discussed the physics behind the earthquake.

AWESOME Fact: The force produced when the fault let go causing the 1931 Hawke’s Bay earthquake was equivalent to setting off 40,000 Hiroshima “Little Boy” sized nuclear bombs 20km below Waipatiki Beach, just north of Napier, with the exception that Waipatiki Beach now doesn’t glow in the dark!

Purely pipe-dreaming, with his design background and my local history and earthquake knowledge we discussed the concept of some sort of audio-visual / CGI / 4D interactive presentation / movie / show where people could get a reasonable accurate representation of, or experience of what it would have been like to be in Napier on that day in 1931 (without the risk of being hit by falling masonry etc.).

I recalled this meeting and our concepts recently with the permanent closure of Marineland, temporary closure of Napier’s museum (and excellent earthquake exhibit) for redevelopment and Napier City Council’s far-too-overdue “Big Picture” plan to turn Marine Parade into a “Kids’ Capital”.

With the wondrous advances in technology that Weta have harnessed, I wonder if there is some way of creating a worthy memorial, or “earthquake attraction” combining local knowledge and Weta’s digital and workshop wizardry, for future Napier residents and visitors to commemorate the event that shaped modern Napier.

My vision for the project has a number of concepts and ideas running through it:

1/ Scale Models
To the best of my knowledge there has never been a scale model of Napier pre or immediately post-earthquake / rebuild. There is a marvellous set of three photos (pre-quake, immediately post-quake, and the city rebuilt) taken from the same place on Napier Hill that has always mesmerised me and there are lots of photos of varying vintage depicting different parts of Napier pre-earthquake, but I would love to be able to look at a hard copy of how the city looked before February 1 1931 – the buildings, architecture, trams, streets and environment.

2/ Then and Now
On a similar thought-path, it would be great to be able to take a virtual walk / tour through Napier’s pre February 3 1931 streets. As a movie or a/v display the buildings could morph from present to past and back again.

3/ Visual Earthquake
While we’re at this stage and with so many pictures of the damage from so many angles, would it be possible to recreate, visually at least, the event? Like I’ve said previously – to be there without threat to personal safety.

4/ Virtual Earthquake
Many years ago there was an “earthquake simulator” (merely pneumatic rams thrusting the theatre seats forwards and backwards) and an audio visual display on the 1931 earthquake at a museum called “The Stables” in Napier, but that is long since gone. With eyewitness accounts, seismic recordings and research, combined with modern special effects and engineering*, could we recreate the event physically? Not just side to side, but up and down etc. One of the things that stand out from survivors’ stories was the sudden upward jolt during the quake that eventuated in so much of Napier’s surrounding swampland at the time rising to inhabitable and usable levels.
(*On an episode of Mythbusters I saw recently, they created just such a “shake table” to simulate a major earthquake.)

5/ Visual thrill-ride
A “visual thrill-ride” like those at Te Papa was another idea. Starting off either as the view a satellite would have had (give or take 30 years) zooming in on Napier’s main street on the morning of 3 February 1931 with life going on as normal, then rocketing through the sky to Waipatiki Beach and down through the earth to the fault to see it move and give (kind of like a geological CSI) before up and on a return flight path, just ahead of the seismic shockwave, into town again to see the city and the effects of the quake as in point 3.

6/ 1931 – The Movie
There has never been a Napier earthquake movie! I wonder if the people at Weta happen to know anyone influential in that field….

Without Marineland and all its old attractions, Napier has become a bit sad and quiet and I fear the Art Deco theme and associated festival (which has been going for over 21 years now) must start to wear out sometime soon.

Not only would my plan be an attraction to tourists, but also a touchstone and reference point to locals as well as an interactive memorial to the most significant event of Napier’s past.

Like I said, for the moment, these are purely my ideas mixed with a bit of pipe dreaming. I don’t know how feasible they are or, ultimately, what developing them into reality would likely cost. But as an attraction or historical viewpoint, I think they’re pretty cool.

What do you think?

TV One is currently screening the series “Descent From Disaster” on Tuesday nights from 9:30pm. One episode is to be about the 1931 earthquake. It’s just a pity Gary McCormack is hosting it 🙁

Abraham Lincoln for NCC!

Posted on July 12, 2013 by Andrew Frame

87 years after America’s Declaration of Independence, in a Pennsylvanian field, a tall man in a tall hat stood before a gathering and began a speech which, at the time went barely noticed. It began:

“Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.”

We’ve all heard of the Gettysburg Address, or at least its first few sentences. But how many of you have heard or read those first few words and promptly tuned out? I have, until now.

“Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But, in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from these honoured dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”

Pretty amazing, huh? The first time I read those next two paragraphs, I damn near cried. It has to be one of the best, most humble, yet powerful political speeches of all time. When was the last time you heard any politician, never mind the President of the United States, talk themselves down and talk the common man up that much and MEAN IT? Remember, this was in the middle of the American Civil War, the nation was torn in two and over half a million people died.

Reading those words it’s hard to believe that the civil war-winning, slave-freeing, vampire-hunting Lincoln was a Republican, especially when you see the sort of mind-set and policies his “Grand Old Party” have become infamous for today.

With our own local body elections coming up later this year, we have to prepare ourselves for a barrage of far less impressive political addresses. Expect the usual rhetoric, verbal promises that aren’t worth the paper they are written on and loads of “I, I, I, me, Me, ME” “Look at how much (little) we (Mayor Arnott & CEO Taylor/ Mayor Yule) have achieved” self-back-slapping. With the amalgamation debate on-going, we can also expect more of the usual Napier vs. Hastings petty parochialism that has plagued Hawke’s Bay for decades.

I sincerely hope we finally see some major changes in power in Hawke’s Bay in October. The region has been bogged down by the same people in the same positions for far too long. Hawke’s Bay needs someone more like Lincoln and a lot less like the currently entrenched bunch of beurocrats.

Hawke’s Bay deserves far better.

Hold The Presses!

Posted on June 28, 2013 by Andrew Frame

Hawke’s Bay Media: Must Try Harder! Part 3

Are my expectations too high, or is the quality of most Hawke’s Bay media just not up to the level our region deserves?

We have a big, vibrant, smart region. But if its media industry is anything to go by, you would be forgiven for not noticing it.

Newspaper

Earlier this year Hawke’s Bay Today took home a few gongs at the annual APN Regional Publishing awards.
Now, this is a commendable achievement, but I can’t help but feel they could still do better.

Our local paper and its pre-merger forebears, Napier’s Daily Telegraph and Hastings’ Herald Tribune used to have large subscription bases and would regularly win prestigious Qantas Media Awards for their reporting and photography. Recently it hasn’t been so fortunate.

A lot has changed in the newspaper industry over the last few years. Interactivity and instant news gratification is what readers now want. The internet and social media have taken large chunks out of the market of those who don’t diversify and as a result subscription numbers have fallen for many “analogue” publications.

Hawke’s Bay Today has been one of them. The paper won an award a couple years ago for best paper with a circulation under 30,000. That wouldn’t be such a bad award, or figure if Hawke’s Bay’s population wasn’t over 150,000. The paper itself got thinner and thinner. From the standard two section broadsheet to often only one very skinny section. Hawke’s Bay Today and APN’s solution? Halve the size of the paper from broadsheet to tabloid!

At the time I was a bit sceptical – the proof of a paper will always be in the reading, not the packaging. For a short time the content seemed to get better – printing tweets and comments submitted online was a nice bit of interactivity, but overall the contents still disappointed me. There still seems to be a consistent lack of investigative journalism and too many re-written press releases. The Art Deco Bus debacle is a good example. Too often there appear to be lots of statements from local councils and officials, but few hard, probing or basic questions asked by the paper. What are they afraid of? These big organisations need the media just as much as the media needs them!

Hawke’s Bay Today, like most papers, has its own online edition, but it too seems to have been suffering. I commented on an article online a few weeks ago and took two days for the comment to be posted, long after the article had gone from the web pages “cover” and lost relevance. On other occasions, I have had a reply email that my comment has (finally) been posted from one of APN’s other satellite publications. Where’s the local online love (and no, not that way)?
The site is also slow in breaking and updating news, when compared to bigger papers, so it’s no surprise they are often getting scooped by Stuff and The Dominion Post. No matter the size of the operation, I would think with the nature of modern-day media that every paper would have a dedicated, full time online team. Hawke’s Bay Today’s page doesn’t seem to have that facility.

I mentioned to HBT editor Andrew Austin when I last saw him that I felt there was something missing from the paper’s website. He said they preferred to look after the paper itself, rather than ‘giving away’ news online. This concept has its merits, but I also feel it’s majorly flawed. Reading the huge amount of news, opinion, blogs and information that Fairfax ‘give away’ every day on Stuff actually makes me want to buy The Dominion Post! Just as APN’s mother-ship site makes the NZ Herald even more appealing.

However, I do find APN’s regional publications come off worse for wear in terms of design and interactivity when compared to Fairfax’s – the Hawke’s Bay Sun looks and feels like a mini Stuff, while Hawke’s Bay Today and its fellow regional publications almost feel like the Herald’s web designers were scared that they might usurp their own website, so have nobbled them a bit.

Grade: C
When compared to Hawke’s Bay’s other media formats of radio and television, our newspaper is by far the leader in communicating with and interacting the Hawke’s Bay community, but I have high expectations, and still feel there is massive room for improvement and that all Hawke’s Bay media must try harder!

Napier In Frame

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