NZ On Air announced with great fanfare how well they think they are doing with the Public Interest Journalism Fund, claiming they’ve paid $137.5 million to get 36 million page views. That’s $3.82 per page view!
New Zealanders have embraced public interest journalism, with 36 million page views of funded stories since NZ On Air’s Public Interest Journalism Fund (PIJF) began one year ago.
In that time, NZ On Air data shows that PIJF content has been viewed across 37 tracked websites with readers, viewers and listeners consistently spending between one to two minutes engaging with the content and, since January, weekly unique browser numbers exceeding 400,000.
“This data, for websites alone, shows us that the fund has achieved what it was set up to do, which was to support New Zealand news media to fill a public interest need,” said Raewyn Rasch (Ngai Tahu/Kai Tahu), Head of Journalism, NZ On Air.
“We are now seeing, on average, around 800-1,000 funded articles each week,” says Rasch. “The impact has far exceeded what we originally expected. And with page views exceeding 36 million in that time, it tells us that people are most definitely engaging with that content.”
There have so far been four funding rounds, allocating close to $44m, with three more to go till the fund wraps up in June next year.
Since it was launched, the PIJF has processed more than 300 applications requesting around $137.5m. These have been across public interest journalism projects, new journalism roles and training and development programmes – with 149 roles*, 15 training programmes and 51 projects funded for 57 media entities.
NZ on Air
Sounds impressive, doesn’t it? Perhaps it is, but let me share with you some statistics from just one site that doesn’t get PJIF funding, The BFD.
- PJIF funding for The BFD = zero
- Page views for the past year = 33,423,732
- Unique browsers (GA calls this users) = 1,409,130
- Engagement/Time on site = 6m 16s
- Pages per Session = 5.29
- Bounce rate = 11.85 per cent
(All statistics are from Google Analytics)
All those paid staff and millions spent to get views not much more than The BFD run on the smell of an oily rag. The BFD is significantly out-performing the PJIF in every material way, and we do it without one red cent of tainted, corrupt NZ Government funding. We do what we do, beating the PJIF, solely with the support of our members and a small amount of advertising.
I am very, very, proud of just what we are achieving, and so should all of you be. We are are literally hitting it out of the park each and every day, putting the corrupt and bribed media to shame.
If you aren’t a member then you really have to ask yourself why not. Can you imagine what we could achieve if you actually became a member? Can you imagine how much more power we would have in an an increasingly bleak media landscape?
If you aren’t a member, join today and help us beat the corrupt media to a bloody pulp.
With your support we really can become The Big Effing Deal we should be. If you feel you can’t commit to being a member regularly then please consider a one-off donation:
Thank you all so much for continuing to support us as we take the fight to the increasingly left-wing and corrupt media. We couldn’t do this without you all.
One last thing: if you run a business and want to sponsor articles on The BFD then contact me directly to discuss. We can offer site-wide sponsorship or naming rights on a regular feature, e.g. The XXX General Debate or The YYY Backchat. You’ve seen how broad our reach is; let’s talk.
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