Hayden Donnell, producer for Radio New Zealand’s Media Watch program, was at an Auckland bar having a drink with some of his old colleagues at the NZ Herald. 

The occasion, which took place earlier this month, was to mark the departure of journalists leaving after the latest restructure of the 161-year-old masthead, which is owned by NZME. 

NZME is publisher of a number of newspapers, as well as the operator of radio stations and property platform OneRoof. 

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New Zealand journalists have not been exempt from the global wave of layoffs, shutdowns and redundancies in the news sector. So commonplace are these events that a TV colleague cited sudden onset sausage roll-based PTSD from all the farewell morning teas he attended before his newsroom was folded into another news organisation.

But at the bar, instead of melancholy undertones with top notes of antipathy (“So lovely to see you. Gosh really? Real estate?”), the mood changed. News filtered through that an Auckland-based Canadian billionaire had bought a substantial share of NZME and was now trying to usurp the board to install his own directors and allied directors. 

“One of the journos I was with said that the evening changed from a wake for the people leaving, to a wake for the people staying,” Donnell says.

The cause for concern is Canadian James (Jim) Grenon, a billionaire who has been based in Auckland since 2012, when he paid just over NZ$10 million for a house on the city’s north shore, now valued as one of the most expensive homes in the country with a current estimate value of NZ$19.5 million. 

Until recently, Grenon had not been widely viewed as an investor with a passion for the fourth estate. According to the website of his company Tom Capital Management, his business interests are oil and gas, financial services, manufacturing and real estate.

But if journalists, union reps and then politicians furrowed their brows in quizzical trepidation at Grenon’s move on NZME, it was in part due to his first dabble in the New Zealand media environment just over two years ago. 

In 2023 Grenon founded an online news website called The Centrist along with a sister site, NZ News Essentials (NZNE). Yes, that is just one letter different from NZME, the legacy media organisation Grenon is now attempting to take over. 

Stay with me on the provocative weirdness.  

Donnell points out that Grenon headquartered NZNE in the same building in which NZME’s accountancy firm is housed. 

While New Zealand is small, it does have more than two buildings, so the choice was stalkerish at best and finance-bro manspreading at least. 

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A Herald staffer who asked to remain anonymous observed that Grenon’s early media forays were the “kind of thing you’d do if you didn’t understand media. Somewhat ham-fisted”. 

The Centrist website declared its purpose was to present “underserved perspectives” and challenge mainstream media. How it has proceeded to go about this was to publish largely anonymous articles with no byline, and show regular interest in certain topics including trans rights, vaccines and te Tiriti (the Treaty of Waitangi). Was this coverage positive? Well, let’s just say The Centrist is unlikely to be taking a float in Auckland’s next gay pride event. (Note: it is not suggested that Grenon exercised any editorial control at The Centrist.)

More pointedly, The Centrist specifically criticised the NZ Herald for lacking balance on issues including climate science and the COVID response. To long-time NZ media observers and insiders, this felt like a fixation that was skew-whiff — the Herald has not in recent memory been seen as a bastion of left-leaning extremism, and as one long-term staffer said, “I don’t think I have ever talked about how I vote at work. Ever. We are all too bloody busy”.

While Grenon has now passed ownership of The Centrist onto fellow Canadian Tameem Barakat, over the past year the site has openly supported prominent alt-right influencer Chantelle Baker as she launched defamation cases against multiple media outlets, with one case against the NZ Herald having already been settled in Bakers’ favour. Baker was banned from Facebook in 2022 for spreading false information.

As Donnell of Media Watch says: “In summary, The Centrist was not really centrist.” 

Grenon’s other observable interest has been political spending. During the 2023 election, he was registered as a “promoter”, which means he has advertised about a candidate, party or election issue. A promoter must register with the Electoral Commission if they spend more than $15,700 on election advertising. 

It is with this peculiar background that Grenon spent NZ$9 million to take his shareholding in NZME to 9.3%, and just days later wrote to the company’s board to propose that most of its current directors be replaced with new ones, including himself. 

The NZME union was quick to raise concerns, as was then shadow minister for broadcasting Willie Jackson.

Speaking to Crikey, Jackson explained it came during his last few days in the media portfolio before taking on social development. 

“I raised my concerns last week and then he [Grenon] came out to give me a good boot. Called me a fool and I thought, well, I’ve still got 24 hours left in the portfolio so I did a post on Facebook responding. 

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Jackson finished the post by pointing out that his party was leading the polls. He says the post has drawn huge amounts of interaction, which tells him ordinary New Zealanders care about their news sources being trustworthy. 

So far, Grenon has only reinforced the foreign billionaire archetype rather than that of a seasoned media mogul, and last week dismissed journalists’ concerns by saying editorial content is a “side issue” and journalists should be “optimistic” about the future. 

He said his proposal would be for a new board to improve on journalism, with “an emphasis on factual accuracy, less selling of the writer’s opinion and appealing to a wider political spectrum”.

“With the growing number of publications, higher quality is going to be important for the Herald to maintain relevance. My goal is to increase readership levels.”

 An annual meeting to vote on NZME board membership is set for April 29.

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