Happy New Year Everybody Everywhere & Good Luck For 2013

Monday, 31 December 2012, 7:48 pm
Column: Alastair Thompson

Scoop.co.nz's New Year's greeting card (featuring some of the stuff we did this year - design and images by Lyndon Hood) - Click for.PDF Version

The team at Scoop wishes all its readers, contributors, clients, subscribers, friends, fans - and indeed everybody everywhere - a most excellent evening this New Year's eve (be careful and stay safe!), as well as the best of all possible fortunes for 2013.

Dear Scoop Independent News Reader,

2013 will be Scoop's 13th full year of operations, i.e. our first full year as a teenager. And at present this year ahead is looking as if it will hold considerable promise for our fledgling news organisation.

It will most definitely be very interesting and challenging.

From my vantage point as an observer of the media revolution taking place online over the past 16 years, the larger revolution which we currently call internet disruption is accelerating. As the pace of change gets ever faster and its impacts ever more significant the disruption is throwing up both opportunities and threats in a similar manner to an erupting volcano.

2013 will be what it will be. Insha'Allah. But expect the unexpected. You have been warned.

What I expect is that 2013 will be a year of exploration. For me this will include a further exploration of Scoop's potential, commercial and as a news organ.

As we age Scoop's value proposition appears to be becoming ever clearer. And in the news area we can expect an increasing level of opportunity as the traditional media continues to struggle to find its feat in the online world.

Already New Zealand is a target rich environment for news, mainly due to the fact that we have a Government who - on the face of things - don't really know how much of a pickle they are in.

For my money 2013, for a middle year in a Parliamentary term, is looking unusually interesting by the standards of our usually quiet little backwater.

I expect three stories in particular will challenge NZ's democratic and legal institutions in a big way in the coming 12 months.

In no particular order these are:
- the "Water Rights", SOE/MOM ("mixed ownership model")/Treaty of Waitangi Supreme Court Case which begins January 18th is possibly the biggest challenge to NZ race relations since the Spring Bok tour;
- the future of Christchurch where recovery / re-development looks set to finally get properly underway, but where so much is going seriously awry. Will Big Gerry Brownlee be able to hold his end of it together? What will happen in the local body elections?;
- and the The Kim Dotcom case, which whatever else you think of it, is unquestionably a slow-moving, industrial strength, media friendly, constitutional conundrum - i.e. in media terms a gift that can be expected to keep giving.

Add to that local body elections in Auckland and Wellington, a Minister of Education in the final stages of meltdown and what may prove to be the most costly computer system screw-up in NZ history (Novopay) - and the stage is set for a full scale political circus par excellence.

Just the sort of environment in which the likes of Scoop Independent News will thrive.

So far as 2012 is concerned tTanks to the marvellous work of the core Scoop editorial team (Deputy Editor Ian Llewellyn, News Editor Lyndon Hood, Political Editor Gordon Campbell, Political Reporter Mark Williams and Duty Editors Anne Russell and Jackie-Little) as well as a multitude of collaborators (too numerous to name), and supported collectively by the members of the Scoop Media Cartel (Public Address - Russell Brown, The Standard - Mike Smith and Lynne Prentice, Pundit - Tim Watkin and Eleanor Black, Live News - Selwyn Manning, Spareroom - Ana Samways and Steven Shaw, and Theatreview - John Smythe) Scoop has had what I think has been its best year yet as a publisher and networker of news content.

Scoop of the year was unquestionably Keith Ng's #wtfmsd masterpiece - the repercussions of which will haunt IT Security for decades to come.

Commercially too things are looking promising for Scoop.

We have finally figured out what we do best and (from the look of things) how to monetise this.

In a world in which NZ's news organisations are weathering a storm of market and economic changes which are irresistibly powerful (you can recap on this here >> Nethui Editorial: News Disrupted - Has News Lost Its Mojo? - 12/11/12 and see an update here >> Fairfax Media slashes New Zealand mastheads value by 80% - 28/12/12), Scoop is increasingly playing the role of life-boat.

With this level of disruption comes opportunity, influence and more than a little responsibility. The role of the 4th estate in New Zealand is something that is important to preserve and we at Scoop very strongly believe we are part of the solution.

Down at the Scoop HQ 2.0 (we have now moved to 354 Lambton Quay) we have been thinking about this a lot over the course of the past couple of years, and in 2013 y'all should watch out for something of a metamorphosis at Scoop. We have plans.

In the meantime…. Kia Kaha (stand tall).

Alastair Thompson

Editor
Scoop Independent News

.. & if you didn't click on the link at the top. Signed by the Scoop Team, here's our New Year's Greeting Card:

Click for big version

Click for big version

ENDS

© Scoop Media

Alastair Thompson

Scoop Publisher

Alastair Thompson is the co-founder of Scoop. He is of Scottish and Irish extraction and from Wellington, New Zealand. Alastair has 24 years experience in the media, at the Dominion, National Business Review, North & South magazine, Straight Furrow newspaper and online since 1997. He is the winner of several journalism awards for business and investigative work.

Contact Alastair Thompson

• Linkedin
• Twitter - @althecat
• Facebook
• Email - alastair@scoop.co.nz