The Dreadful Dominion Post

A week ago, in the office at day’s end over drinks, Sam, one of our key chaps, mentioned he’d not renewed his Dominion Post subscription. I expressed alarm saying he needed to be au fait with what’s happening in a city we have such a large investment in.

“I read it online,” he replied. “Not good enough,” I protested to which Sam argued, too much of the content was simply insulting.

Sam’s a news hound, subscribing to The Week, The Economist and online, to The Telegraph, The Times, The Financial Times, Australian Financial Review, and other publications.

Reading the Dom’ the next morning I realised he was right. It ran a story (I’m not making this up) spread across two pages and an unbelievable five columns, plus a photo of an 18-year-old bloke, Benjamin, looking as if he’d just been sentenced to death. And why?

Well it transpires Benjamin wants to get his learner’s drivers licence, but his hometown Upper Hutt no longer has a testing facility. So he must go down to Lower Hutt, a 10 minute motorway drive.

This burden is so overwhelmingly onerous, Benjamin’s life is apparently over. And given the 5 columns across two pages devoted to it, it seems the Dom’ agrees, which is why it’s life is also nearing the end.

Running this abominable crap insults the newspaper’s readership. It’s bad enough with their bigoted humourless cartoonist daily attacking the Nats leader, as they’ve done for the last 2 years.

One thing’s clear. Buying the Dom’ ownership for 20 cents as the new proprietor recently did (allowing 80 cents for the rest of the fleet) is starting to make sense. The only question is, did she overpay?

Now apparently the Dom’s dropped Steve Elers as his truth-telling doesn’t fit its agenda. That may be the final straw for me when my current subscription runs out.

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