It's elementary my dear.....

19 May 2011

My investigation has continued on for this week as well where I have now had a chance to sit down with key people involved in the loading of the content as well as key people in the creation of content.

One of the people I got a chance to sit down with was Shayne Currie (Deputy Editor of the NZ Herald) and pick his brains on how stories are created and why certain stories make it and others dont; which stories are front page news and which aren't; and also what the relationship between nzherald.co.nz and the NZ Herald print product is.

It was very heartening to find out that ALL reporters are expected to file their report with online to make sure we capture the breaking news as quickly as we can.

I was also invited to the afternoon news brief where the chief reporters meet with Shayne along with a representative from Online (Nik Dirga -NZ Herald Production Editor) and Newspaper Sales & Marketing and they go through the stories that are being worked on to prepare for the next day's newspaper including what should make the front page and headline. A very interesting meeting where I felt like I was from the future since I knew what the front page of the paper would look like next day. A bit far fetched i know but it was fun!

So the reason why I am doing all this is to be able to deliver certain things to Jeremy Rees as part of the project.

The Project deliverables include:



• An assessment of the current systems and processes; including step by step guide on how to load content in each area (herald, regionals and magazines)


• Noted strengths and weaknesses of the above


• Recommendations for ‘quick wins’ that come out of the assessment


The NZ Budget is being announced today and it is going to be streamed from a box set up on my desk so I am currently operating out of half a desk and right in the middle of it. Exciting times, if you're into the budget or wondering about how live streaming works!!

Day 3 after Go live day

06 October 2010

This past weekend has been hectic. Everyone pitched in and it was fantastic to see the team working as one…. facilities with IT; IT with production. Excellent!

We shut down Pacific Magazines on Friday morning and started the move process. The movers were in there early and things started getting underway. In the mean time, the IT boys were working hard to make sure that they were ready when the equipment was shifted over to APN premises.

A lot of people worked right through the weekend to ensure that come Monday, things would be ready to go.

I walked in on Monday with an expectation that a lot of things would go wrong. Probably sounds pessimistic but just the scale of the move and the time that we had to get it done wasn’t filling me with a lot of confidence. So, I was pleasantly surprised when I saw that as of home time on Monday, we had a few teething issues but nothing major.
The new staff were in, looking around at the new environment. The NZM staff were probably as curious as them and it was surreal watching the interaction.

Having said that, Things overall were running smoothly! It was an amazing feeling.

There are still a few things here and there that need to be tidied up but I am happy with how this has come about.

Now that this project comes to an end, I can start looking at the next one that is coming up in Brisbane. More on that in the coming days