Herald On Sunday Editor Quits! Tabloid Shocker Confession!

The outgoing editor of the Herald on Sunday, Shayne Currie, just wrote his last editorial.

This is the 280th edition of the Herald on Sunday - and my last as editor. Some people will be relieved about this. Mike Hosking, perhaps. He's not the paper's biggest fan.

I have something in common with Mike Hosking after all.

Charlotte Dawson has not really been a happy camper, either. She has always thought, wrongly, we have had it in for her and she takes particular offence at anything written by our irrepressible gossip columnist Rachel Glucina.

When a newspaper lists the vacuous Charlotte Dawson as an enemy, that’s a huge clue why the HOS has been such a letdown.

Thankfully, Hosking and Dawson aren't the norm. In five years, we've grown our readership to more than 370,000, become the third-biggest newspaper in New Zealand, and won every major newspaper award.

There are only three Sunday rags, all of middling to poor quality. You’re going to each of the major awards eventually. The papers probably share them around.

In an age when it's easy to write off newspapers (and journalists can be the biggest doomsayers of all) the Herald on Sunday's success should be ample proof that a masthead will succeed when it listens to its readers and adapts its content accordingly.

The Herald on Sunday has been shaped by its readers. The newspaper you're holding today is a completely different beast to the one we launched in October 2004.

Translation: Give the suckers what they want.

Over the years we've become known as the property paper, the car crash paper, the Tony Veitch paper, the All Blacks paper and the Millie Elder paper.

Together with every other Sunday paper.

We don't mind any of this.

Translation: Proud to be a tabloid.

We've always tried to adapt to what our readers want - and buy. Selling the paper is of utmost importance, and to achieve that it's not always what might be considered the best, traditional journalism that makes the front page.

Translation: We’ll print anything – so long as it sells. it doesn't have to be the best. Anything will do.

The front page has to excite, titillate and capture your interest within three seconds - we rely much more heavily on retail sales than a daily newspaper with its larger subscriber base. Of everything we do, the front page is always the most frequently discussed aspect of the HoS. (Except when we stuff up the crossword grid - then all hell breaks loose.)

Translation: Doesn't have to be newsworthy. Just titillating.

The worst thing we can do is be boring. A good guideline is National Radio. If its media commentators start tut-tutting about one of our stories, it usually means we're on the right track.

Translation: There is no bad publicity in this game. If people complain in the media because we write rubbish, we win. So let’s write more rubbish.

National Radio staff have no concept of working in a commercial market.

Translation: I am taking enormous liberties by pretending nobody in National Radio has any commercial media experience, and am hoping nobody will notice this little fib.

The point is, if we don't sell the newspaper, we won't have a product or pages to present the work of some of New Zealand's best journalists and columnists.

Or maybe those top journalists would just go work for the competition, or find some other outlet for their work. As for some of the best columnists, who please? Kerre Woodham?

You get the picture. I should say before I go on that I don’t hold Shayne Currie solely responsible for the mediocre rag the HOS is. I know the newspaper game is a tough one, and that he has corporate masters to account to. But I also won’t be lectured to by someone who attempts to justifies poor quality by blaming the fact it’s tough in the “real world”, and who then tries to blame critics for having no understanding of the media game. If someone puts something out for public consumption and I don’t like it, I’ll yell as loudly as I want about how much I don't like it. As a consumer of media products I am in fact an expert - an expert in what people like me want. And the customer is always right, as the cliche goes.

I don’t usually buy the Sunday papers any more. I might skim their websites for anything interesting going down, but won't normally buy a hard copy. Whenever I've tried to read the HOS I have found myself spending five minutes just turning pages looking for something, anything, worth reading. By that time I'm usually at the end. I’m sure there are many like me who would be more than happy to forgive the HOS’s occasional foray into some celebrity’s or sportsperson’s underwear draw, if the paper was also publishing more of the hard-hitting stories and news it is surely capable of providing.

If I want to read only gossip and uninformed opinion, I can do that already on the internet. I can even write it. If a newspaper wants me to buy its product it has to convince me it can do a better job on the other stuff – like news and analysis.