News of New Zealanders via Global Media

War Correspondent Kate Webb Read Her Own Obits

War Correspondent Kate Webb Read Her Own Obits

She was sitting on the steps of her hotel, in the middle of Saigon, when the military jeeps zipped by, headed toward the sound of gunfire. So that’s where Kate Webb headed, too. “I…

Robin Hammond Image Best Nat Geo Picture

Robin Hammond Image Best Nat Geo Picture

Documentary photographer New Zealand-born Robin Hammond’s image of Avery Jackson, a transgender child from Kansas City in the United States, has been selected as one of the National Geographic’s 57 best images of 2017. The…

New Cops Ad Drives Huge Increase in Web Traffic

New Cops Ad Drives Huge Increase in Web Traffic

How do you reach a broad cross-section of potential police recruits? Adweek asks. With an entertaining video that features a broad cross-section of police spokespeople. Ogilvy did just that for New Zealand Police, and…

Beats 1 DJ Zane Lowe Broadcasts from Sydney

Beats 1 DJ Zane Lowe Broadcasts from Sydney

New Zealand and Australian musical artists will be showcased to the world when DJ and tastemaker Zane Lowe broadcasts his global Beats 1 radio show from Sydney this week. Sydney soul/hip hop act Winston Surfshirt,…

When Clarke Gayford’s Partner Became PM

When Clarke Gayford’s Partner Became PM

Clarke Gayford, host of televisions series Fish of the Day and partner of New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, describes life with bodyguards, a state mansion and a call from Donald Trump in an…

John Clarke Remembered by Popular Radio Host

John Clarke Remembered by Popular Radio Host

New Zealander John Clarke was “adored and admired” by the host of 3AW breakfast radio, Ross Stevenson, who dominates Australia’s most competitive radio market, Melbourne. Clarke and Stevenson co-wrote the ABC TV comedy The Games…

Colenso BBDO Win Gold for DB Export Beer Bottle Sand Campaign

Colenso BBDO Win Gold for DB Export Beer Bottle Sand Campaign

Colenso BBDO have won Gold in Adweek’s Project Isaac Awards for their Beer Bottle Sand campaign for DB Export. The award was won in the Event/Experience…

Newsman Peter Bale Hired by Wikipedia Founder

Newsman Peter Bale Hired by Wikipedia Founder

New Zealand-born former Reuters reporter Peter Bale, 52, has been hired by Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales as the founding editor of WikiTribune, which will bring together professional journalists and a community of volunteers to…

Beats 1 DJ Zane Lowe Chats to Highsnobiety

Beats 1 DJ Zane Lowe Chats to Highsnobiety

For music fans everywhere, Apple’s Beats 1 radio has become known as the definitive stop for breaking news of the musical variety. And it’s all thanks to the triumphant triumvirate of DJs who make…

MTV UK Getting it Georgie Wright

MTV UK Getting it Georgie Wright

One of the “new generation of MTV talent” is New Zealander Georgie Wright, 22, a news presenter for the broadcaster’s UK channel. Wright, who also works full-time at i-D magazine, moved to London in 2015…

Journalist Jamil Anderlini Emancipated in Hong Kong

Journalist Jamil Anderlini Emancipated in Hong Kong

Asia editor at the Financial Times, New Zealander Jamil Anderlini spent the past 11 years on the Chinese mainland in Beijing. In a feature for the paper, Anderlini talks about his move to Hong…

Zane Lowe’s Beats 1 Not Built For Passive Music Fan

Zane Lowe’s Beats 1 Not Built For Passive Music Fan

From being BBC Radio 1’s “tastemaker-in-charge” for fresh, cutting-edge music to helming Apple’s fresh, cutting-edge new radio station, New Zealander Zane Lowe has found himself at the forefront of music media development, time and…

Nigel Hunt Charts Dubai’s Eye-Catching Growth

Nigel Hunt Charts Dubai’s Eye-Catching Growth

Online response to a film charting Dubai’s growth since just before 1979 has almost been as remarkable as the development it depicts, according to the National’s Nick Leech. The film is made by New…

Discovery’s First Ever Global Intern is Ben Mikha

Discovery’s First Ever Global Intern is Ben Mikha

After 10 weeks, 10,000 entries and almost a million votes cast, Discovery Channel has found its first global intern, 25-year-old Ben Mikha from Auckland. As the inaugural Discovery intern Mikha will soon jet off to…

John McBeth Launches Book on Indonesia’s SBY

John McBeth Launches Book on Indonesia’s SBY

New Zealand-born veteran correspondent John McBeth captured the darker side of former Indonesian president Susilo “SBY” Bambang Yudhoyono’s presidency in his new book The Loner: President Yudhoyono’s Decade of Trial and Indecision. The title is…

Suzie Dawson Seeking Asylum in Moscow

Suzie Dawson Seeking Asylum in Moscow

Suzie Dawson didn’t set out to be an activist, but her involvement with the Occupy movement at the start of the decade led her to nut out and articulate her political perspective. The path…

Tane Mahuta Puts Down Roots in Melbourne

Tane Mahuta Puts Down Roots in Melbourne

Tourism New Zealand is bringing the rich history of Tane Mahuta to Melbourne’s CBD with a new eight-week campaign, “Every day’s a different journey in Northland”. The out-of-home campaign is focused around a giant art…

Standout Commercials for Cheil’s Malcolm Poynton

Standout Commercials for Cheil’s Malcolm Poynton

Global chief creative officer at Cheil Worldwide, New Zealand-born Malcolm Poynton, talks to Adweek in Las Vegas about the “lasting genius” of the “legendary” Dove Campaign for Real Beauty and some of his other…

Kate Catalinac Keeping Her Eye on US Elections

Kate Catalinac Keeping Her Eye on US Elections

Creative director at San Francisco advertising agency Goodby, Silverstein & Partners, New Zealand-born Kate Catalinac is the co-creator of an “eye-opening” anti-Donald Trump video that juxtaposes the United States’ legacy of great accomplishments against…

Apple’s Zane Lowe Securing the Big Interviews

Apple’s Zane Lowe Securing the Big Interviews

Apple’s super-DJ is the most powerful player in music – and the man who can bring Britney to London. New Zealander Zane Lowe tells the Evening Standard about working with Calvin Harris, Drake and…

NZ Radio Wins at NY Festival Awards

NZ Radio Wins at NY Festival Awards

Radio New Zealand and Newstalk ZB have taken out several awards at the New York Festivals® International Radio Program Awards, which honour the World’s Best Radio Programs℠. “This year’s entries focused on the critical issues…

Kids Mimic Donald Trump in Powerhouse Parody

Kids Mimic Donald Trump in Powerhouse Parody

Six New Zealand children are taking aim at US Republican presidential hopeful Donald Trump in a parody advertisement for online electricity retailer, Powerhouse, with the hope of proving that power should be used for…

Peter Bale at the Crux of Panama Papers Leak

Peter Bale at the Crux of Panama Papers Leak

Chief executive of the Washington, D.C.-based Center for Public Integrity, former Wairarapa Times-Age and Evening Post journalist Peter Bale, is the New Zealander central to the Panama Papers leak from Panamanian law firm Mossack…

Jemaine Clement Plays Joseph Banks in New Podcast

Jemaine Clement Plays Joseph Banks in New Podcast

Jemaine Clement returns to radio playing Captain Cook’s botanist Lord Joseph Banks in the podcast The Mysterious Secrets of Uncle Bertie’s Botanarium, which is currently airing on the Howl app. Written by fellow New Zealander…

Chris Kraus’ I Love Dick Coming Soon to TV

Chris Kraus’ I Love Dick Coming Soon to TV

Emmy Award-winning auteur Jill Soloway, creator of the gender- and genre-bending TV series Transparent, recently announced her next project: an adaptation of I Love Dick, Chris Kraus’s psycho-sexual epistolary novel about a married, failed…

Virgin’s Tom Mockridge Talks New Challenges

Virgin’s Tom Mockridge Talks New Challenges

New Zealander Tom Mockridge, chief executive of British cable group Virgin Media, talks with the Financial Times about broadband, News Corp and why UK football television rights need a big shake-up. Mockridge is so habitually…

Peter Arnett at Vietnam’s First Major Battle

Peter Arnett at Vietnam’s First Major Battle

An archivist at the New York Times has discovered a small trove of photographs correspondent Neil Sheehan took 50 years ago while covering the first major clash of the Vietnam War between the American…

Kathryn Ryan Wins 2015 International Radio Personality of the Year Award

Kathryn Ryan Wins 2015 International Radio Personality of the Year Award

RNZ National’s Nine to Noon presenter, Kathryn Ryan has been awarded the 2015 International Radio Personality of the Year Award. “For fifteen hours of live broadcasting to be so outstanding every week is testament to…

Killing Joke’s Jaz Coleman Loves NZ for Quiet

Killing Joke’s Jaz Coleman Loves NZ for Quiet

Adopted New Zealander, lead singer of post-punk English band Killing Joke, Jaz Coleman tells Billboard about his average day, which involves catching fish. Coleman has a home on a secret island in the Hauraki Gulf,…

TIME Looks Back at 1997 Everest Cover Story

TIME Looks Back at 1997 Everest Cover Story

The new movie Everest is all Hollywood, with big movie stars meant for a big IMAX screen. But the story it tells is very real. TIME magazine looks back at the images and account…

Antony Young Leaving Adland to Live on NZ Farm

Antony Young Leaving Adland to Live on NZ Farm

Media agency veteran Antony Young will trade in spreadsheets for orchards as he plots a move back to his native New Zealand with his wife and children to live and work on a farm. Young…

Massey University Professor Chris Galloway committed to telling stories of Palestinians

Massey University Professor Chris Galloway committed to telling stories of Palestinians

“I feel personal commitment to tell the stories of Palestinians in the West Bank where I taught voluntarily a few times,” Chris Galloway, a professor from Massey University, told the Tehran Times on the…

Zane Lowe Helping Apple Reinvent Live Radio

Zane Lowe Helping Apple Reinvent Live Radio

For the last 12 years, New Zealand radio DJ Zane Lowe has been a top tastemaker on the BBC’s Radio 1 by championing brand-new music, landing interviews with stars like Kanye West and running…

Award-Winning Correspondent Peter Arnett Speaks on War

Award-Winning Correspondent Peter Arnett Speaks on War

Pulitzer-winning journalist New Zealander Peter Arnett spoke to a packed crowd at California State University in Fresno on his 50 years of reporting experience – from covering the Vietnam War to his struggles with…

BBC’s Adrenalin-Fuelled DJ Zane Lowe Looks Ahead to LA

BBC’s Adrenalin-Fuelled DJ Zane Lowe Looks Ahead to LA

The “faintly tearful” DJ Zane Lowe, BBC Radio 1’s “most enthusiastic music fan, explains why his stomach is churning at the thought of saying goodbye,” bowing out of the network after 12 years for…

Zane Lowe to Leave BBC Radio 1 for Apple in US

Zane Lowe to Leave BBC Radio 1 for Apple in US

The presenter of BBC Radio 1’s popular weekday evening music show, Auckland-born DJ Zane Lowe, 41, is moving to the United States after 12 years at the station to take up a role at…

Roland Taylor’s Sydney Storm Grabs World’s Attention

Roland Taylor’s Sydney Storm Grabs World’s Attention

Sydney’s spectacular early-season storms may just crack open a photographic career for Wanaka-born Roland Taylor, with his recent images attracting hundreds of thousands of online views. Taylor, 24, combined a perfect vantage point…

Bret Mckenzie Nails Music for Old Spice Commercial

Bret Mckenzie Nails Music for Old Spice Commercial

Bret McKenzie has composed a “lunatic” 60-second musical for men’s aftershave brand Old Spice, and “Dadsong” “isn’t just an important component – it’s the main component, around which everything revolves”, according to Adweek. Sara Matarazzo,…

Richard Burton Couldn’t Beat George Silk on a Photo Call

Richard Burton Couldn’t Beat George Silk on a Photo Call

In 1993, New Zealand-born LIFE photojournalist George Silk was asked by American photographer John Loengard if in his long career, Silk had been “willing to pose pictures.” Silk’s reply is worth setting down here in…

Former Hacker Keeping Secrets Safe at First Look

Former Hacker Keeping Secrets Safe at First Look

For the last month, 34-year-old former Aucklander Morgan Marquis-Boire has been the director of security for startup First Look Media, a website that has become the most prolific publisher of NSA leaker Edward Snowden’s…

DJ Gets Unrivalled Access to Stars on New MTV Show

DJ Gets Unrivalled Access to Stars on New MTV Show

Broadcaster Zane Lowe, the voice of the BBC’s popular Radio 1 show, is trying his hand at television with a new show coming to MTV Music, which – despite its mouthful of a title,…

Virgin Media Chief Takes on Murdoch in Broadband Duel

Virgin Media Chief Takes on Murdoch in Broadband Duel

News Corporation trouble-shooter, Tom Mockridge, who jumped ship last year to take charge of Liberty Global’s most expensive acquisition, the $23b purchase of Britain’s cable champion Virgin Media, is now taking on his old…

Journalist Gives His Take on Japanese Cinema

Journalist Gives His Take on Japanese Cinema

Auckland-born Don Brown, journalist and fluent Japanese speaker, is writing a new bi-monthly column for the Asahi Shimbun on Japanese cinema. Brown studied journalism and Japanese at the Auckland University of Technology before moving to…

Lorde Makes the Cover of Rolling Stone

Lorde Makes the Cover of Rolling Stone

“The thrill that’ll getcha when you get your picture on the cover of the Rolling Stone,” sang Dr Hook in 1972, a blatant but ultimately successful act of musical sycophancy that earned the band…

Lowe Is ENERGY Personified at BBC 1

Lowe Is ENERGY Personified at BBC 1

In the studio of the BBC’s Radio 1 station, the boisterous New Zealander Zane Lowe is a few minutes into his own show, Peter Robinson reports for the Guardian. “RIDICULOUS SOUND!” Lowe honks over…

Perth Breakfast Host Turns His Alarm Clock Off

Perth Breakfast Host Turns His Alarm Clock Off

After more than four decades hosting Perth’s mix94.5 breakfast show, New Zealand-born radio announcer Fred Botica, 66, will be able to have a sleep-in ahead of a new shift in the afternoon drive program. Botica…

Men of a Certain Age Rile Booker Winner

Men of a Certain Age Rile Booker Winner

Sexism in the literary world is thriving, Man Booker prize winner Eleanor Catton says. The youngest-ever winner of one of the world’s most prestigious writing award says her book, The Luminaries, received a “bullying”…

Dropping Sentimentality with Print Paywalls

Dropping Sentimentality with Print Paywalls

“Last November Mike Darcey, then a top executive at BSkyB, a British satellite-television company, received a phone call from Rupert Murdoch, the boss of News Corporation,” The Economist writes. “Murdoch wanted him to run…

When Zipper Met Kanye at No 3 Abbey Road

When Zipper Met Kanye at No 3 Abbey Road

“It’s always going to be an entertaining proposition when American hip hop star Kanye West grants someone an interview opportunity” Pedestrian TV says, and this time, New Zealand-born broadcaster BBC Radio 1 host Zane…

Arnett Features in New AP Vietnam War Book

Arnett Features in New AP Vietnam War Book

Distinguished New Zealand war correspondent, Pulitzer Prize-winning Peter Arnett is one of a number of well-known journalists whose text will be included in Vietnam: The Real War, a photographic history by the Associated Press,…

Auckland Students Feminist Video a Hit

Auckland Students Feminist Video a Hit

YouTube’s parent company, Google, has admitted the site made a mistake when it removed Auckland University law students’ viral parody video of Robin Thicke’s “Blurred Lines”. The video received over 300,000 views before it was…

Detained New Zealand Journalist Freed

Detained New Zealand Journalist Freed

New Zealand journalist Wayne Hay has been released by the Egyptian authorities after he, and three other journalists, were detained for five days. The Telegraph reports that the former TVNZ journalist, along with…

That’s Showbiz for Wootton Who Takes Up Tabloid Role

That’s Showbiz for Wootton Who Takes Up Tabloid Role

Former News of the World showbiz editor Lower Hutt-born journalist Dan Wootton, 30, is joining British tabloid, Sun on Sunday, where he will write a double-page showbiz column as part of moves…

Top New Zealand Radio Presenter Recognised Internationally

Top New Zealand Radio Presenter Recognised Internationally

Radio New Zealand presenter Kim Hill has been awarded a Gold Medal for Best Talk Show Host by the Grand Jury at the 2013 New York Festival Radio Awards. This is Hill’s second major…

Mockridge Appointed Head of Pay Television Service

Mockridge Appointed Head of Pay Television Service

Tom Mockridge has been appointed Virgin Media chief executive, replacing fellow New Zealander Neil Berkett. The move will see the former chief executive of News International, a near 22-year veteran of News Corp, return…

Keeping Track of North Korean News

Keeping Track of North Korean News

Christchurch researcher Frank Feinstein has dedicated a website, to cataloguing dispatches from North Korea’s state media organization, Korean Central News Agency (KCNA). The website, called KCNA Watch, catalogues every KCNA English report on…