A FEW YEARS AGO, I asked a media studies lecturer if the news media had a future without state funding. She looked startled as if I had posed a question that made no sense. The idea that the state could, or would, ride to the rescue of private sector media outlets was outlandish.

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Known principally for his political commentaries in The Dominion Post, The ODT, The Press and the late, lamented Independent, and for "No Left Turn", his 2007 history of the Left/Right struggle in New...