Tag: NZ Herald

The New Zealand Herald is the largest daily newspaper in the country. Its main circulation area is Auckland and the North part of the North Island.

Many of the links here are to stories I wrote for the paper.

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New Zealand Herald digital editionThe New Zealand Herald sent an email today inviting readers to subscribe to a NZ$25 a month digital edition.

This is a good idea. A digital edition is an exact electronic copy of the print edition. The paper is available online at 6am each day. It is separate from the website version of the paper at http://nzherald.co.nz.

You can read the digital edition from a Windows PC or Mac in a browser. There are apps for iOS and Android users.

Read on PCs, tablets, phones

The NZ Herald digital edition displays well on a big PC screen. A digital facsimile of the daily paper would be a joy to read on, say, the large version of the iPad Pro. You’ll get by fine on most laptops and 10-inch tablets.

A digital newspaper is harder work on a mobile phone. Small screens are not the best way to read tabloid pages. Yet even that format can be useful sometimes.

Digital newspaper editions are not new. They’ve been around since the 90s. A digital version of The New Zealand Herald was available on Pressdisplay (now called PressReader) when the Herald was still a broadsheet.

Like a newspaper, without paper

There are two reasons why a digital edition could be better than reading a website. First, web news pages lack context. You can instantly grasp the relative importance of stories and how they relate to each other.

While editors place the most important stories at the top of a list on a site’s home page, that’s not the same. And anyway, few readers arrive via the home page. For most news context is something decided by a Google algorithm or another automatic process.

Online news sites serve up atomised news, digital editions give a bigger picture.

The other aspect of old school print papers that you miss when reading news websites is the lack of filtering.

Papers are organised into sections: News, world news, business, sport and so on, but they serve up a wide range of material within these broad sections. You’ll find you’ll read more widely and are better informed — even if that is just a matter of glancing at headlines in passing.

The downside of a digital edition is that is out of date after publication. Although you might see this as a positive if you think of it a snapshot frozen in time.

At $25 a month, the NZ Herald digital edition is about half the price of having the print edition delivered. Some print subscriptions include the digital edition at no extra cost. For some readers that makes the digital edition great added value.

Money

Given the high cost of printing and distribution, it might seem the publisher isn’t passing on all the potential cost savings.

In practice, it’s more complicated. Setting up the technology to deliver a digital edition is expensive, it may require frequent tweaking. Reader numbers for digital editions is often a fraction of print edition reader numbers. So these costs are shared by a relatively low number of readers.

One trick the Herald’s digital edition marketing effort has missed is offering a sample edition so potential customers can check the format is right for them.

Six years ago Rupert Murdoch hailed tablets as the newspaper industry’s saviour. That was premature. The industry is still stumbling to find a way to make money after the advertising apocalypse. Digital editions could help, but it puts the onus back on publishers to ensure the content is worth paying for.

Bill Bennett writes features for New Zealand Herald business reports.

Vikram Kumar

Vikram Kumar on fog computingIf you’ve only just come to terms with cloud computing, here comes the next thing: fog computing.

“Fog computing is the necessary next stage on from cloud computing,” says Vikram Kumar, the chief executive of KotahiNet. “It is where the edge of networks become intelligent and autonomous.”

Fog computing has the features of cloud computing, such as data, computing, storage and applications. But instead of concentrating resources in a data centre, it moves them closer to where they are used. At times, it can mean putting computing resources in locations well beyond the reach of traditional networks. It turns out this is an ideal way of dealing with the Internet of Things (IoT).

Read the full story by Bill Bennett in the New Zealand Herald.

Last year a total of 140 million air passengers departed from China. Some 355,000 — about 0.2 per cent — of them flew to Auckland. Auckland Airport chief executive Adrian Littlewood says the numbers show untapped potential for New Zealand’s tourism sector.

“Today, our share is just a small fraction of a big market. It means our opportunity to grow is huge. If we could move the dial from 0.2 per cent to 0.4 per cent of that total, our China numbers would double. At the moment Chinese arrivals make up 10 per cent of the total at Auckland Airport. An increase in that number would make a difference, he says.

Read the full story by Bill Bennett in the New Zealand Herald.

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Alex Wang Huawei

The next generation of mobile technology is still at least five years away. But when it arrives New Zealand could be among the first countries to get it. The telecommunications industry still hasn’t nailed down a detailed plan for 5G, but Alex Wang, Huawei vice-president of wireless marketing, says his company is determined to play a leading role in its development.

Speaking at Huawei’s leafy 2sq km Shenzhen campus, Wang says 4G is now mainstream mobile technology. It works well but there’s already a need for something more.

Wang says the earlier move from 3G to 4G meant moving from networks made for voice calls to networks optimised for data traffic.

Read the full story by Bill Bennett in the New Zealand Herald.

• Bill Bennett travelled to Shenzhen and Singapore courtesy of Huawei. Picture shows Alex Wang, vice-president of wireless marketing.

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Henry Withers, ASB general manager corporate banking.

A story I wrote for the NZ Herald Capital Markets report:

A strong economy is boosting interest in NZ assets, as ASB’s Henry Withers tells Bill Bennett.

After a significant, extended boom riding the back of high commodity prices Australia’s economy has now slowed.

Henry Withers, ASB general manager corporate banking, says that as a result, a rebalancing between the Australian and New Zealand economies is under way that is leading to an increase of trans-Tasman investor interest in New Zealand assets.

“Our economy is stronger than Australia’s at the moment. We’re seeing better relative GDP growth, here forecast GDP growth is 3 per cent compared with 2.4 per cent in Australia.

Read the full story at the NZ Herald…