For years, the problem with public funding of journalism in Aotearoa was the same as the problem with public funding of software development worldwide; only providing one-off grants for projects, when what need funding is *teams*.
More recently, things like the Public Interest Journalism Fund have stretched to salaries for
individual journalists. But no amount of severed fingers make a hand, and no number of individually-funded journalists add up to a newsroom.
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Like a lot of people, #NewsHub's closure has got me thinking about media funding again.
The Public Interest Journalism Fund was NZ$55m over 3 years. Round it up to 60, and round the population down to 5 million and that's $4 per kiwi per year (20÷5). Less than a coffee or a beer.
A small price to pay to help keep hundreds of journalists employed, not to mention freed up to work on public interest projects, instead of whatever clickbait brings in advertising for their employers.
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Strypey