A guide to The Spinoff, for readers old and new

A week of explaining what we do and why

Kia ora and welcome to The Weekend with Madeleine Chapman

This week The Spinoff published an open letter about the financial reality we find ourselves in. If you haven't read it yet, here it is (spoiler: it's bleak but hopeful). The point within it about the appreciation for the work we do being divorced from the financial state of the company is perhaps best illustrated by everything else we published over the past five days. On Monday, we ran a longform, harrowing essay of a woman who has been harassed and stalked for nearly a decade. It's one of the most-read stories we've published this year. And on Friday we finished a three-part investigation into how the Wellington Airport shares saga unfolded and splintered the left. Two ambitious and popular editorial projects published on either side of a plea for financial support from readers and commercial partners alike.

The response to our open letter has been heartening and a little overwhelming. We heard from a lot of readers who said they'd read The Spinoff a lot over the past 10 years and had finally decided to make a monthly or annual contribution, and we heard from just as many who said they had only read a few things on The Spinoff but would "check out the site" to see if it was worth supporting.

If you're a subscriber to The Weekend, you will be very familiar with our work but sometimes I forget that not everyone is paying attention to every piece of work published on The Spinoff like I am. So for those who aren't sure what we're all about or even those who read every day but don't necessarily know what to expect, here's a beginner's guide to The Spinoff.

Five days of publishing and a weekend magazine. We publish articles on thespinoff.co.nz six days a week. On weekdays, we run two lead stories at 5am, typically on news topics, politics or social issues. From 9am, we publish a story every 90 minutes or so until 3pm. Topics include pop culture, books, kai, Ātea, and anything we find silly or funny enough to write about. On Saturday morning, we publish our weekend work all at once, about seven stories. We treat the weekend like its own liftout, with reliable books, culture, music and essay offerings.

Cover stories. The Spinoff publishes regular feature writing – we consider ourselves first and foremost an online magazine – but semi-regularly we run what we call cover stories. Longform features that, if we were a print magazine, would be on the cover. These stories take weeks, usually months, to come together but are, in my opinion, among the best longform journalism you're likely to read this year. We began publishing cover stories in June 2024 and have published 15 so far, on big topics like homelessness, stalking, infertility, mental health in prisons and organ donation. We also now record our cover stories so they can be listened to as well as read.

Opinion and explainers. We don't report daily news but if there's something big happening, we'll publish a feature or op-ed on it or, if it's a complex and dense topic, we'll run an explainer to break it down for you. In the event of national breaking news, we drop everything and report events as they unfold.

Weekly formats. Every day is different but some Spinoff offerings you can set your clock to.

The Cost of Being. Turns out everybody loves to know (and judge) how strangers spend their money. Laid out as a questionnaire, regular New Zealanders outline their income and outgoings to reveal the cost of being them. Anyone can fill out the form here and, due to its massive popularity, we now publish Cost of Being every Tuesday and Friday at 9am.

Help Me Hera. Hera Lindsay Bird's fan favourite advice column is published every Thursday at 9am.

The Spinoff Essay. We love a good personal essay so every weekend, every Saturday at 5am we lead the site with the Spinoff Essay. They can be written by staff writers or, until our recent commissioning freeze, external contributors but they're alway enlightening, emotional and evergreen.

New to streaming. Exactly what you expect, this is a weekly breakdown of every new addition to streaming platforms available in New Zealand. It has every title being added as well as a few handpicked recommendations. New to streaming is published every Monday at 2pm.

Arts and culture interviews. Arts and culture coverage is diminishing rapidly around the country. We are a small team and can't write features about everyone so instead we have three weekly formats that allow local artists to speak to their life and work. My Life in TV showcases our screen stars and their relationships with TV every Saturday morning. At the same time, My Perfect Weekend Playlist is local musicians sharing their music favourites and weekend routines. And every Wednesday at 2pm we publish a Books Confessional, where authors and prominent New Zealanders talk reading, writing and all things books.

Unity Books bestsellers. Not sure what the best new books are? Every Friday at 2pm, we run the bestselling titles from Unity Books in Wellington and Auckland.

Newsletters. If you want your daily news hit, subscribe to The Bulletin, edited by Stewart Sowman-Lund. Every weekday morning at 7am you'll get the most important news of the day sent to you in a curated email, including any Spinoff stories you may have missed. The Daily is sent every weekday at 5pm and quite simply gives you everything published on The Spinoff that day. The Weekend is delivered every Saturday at 9am and includes an editorial by me plus all the best Spinoff stories from the week. Rec Room is our weekly pop culture newsletter and includes culture news and reviews from Tara Ward, sent out every Friday morning.

Podcasts. Fan favourite Gone by Lunchtime is our fortnightly politics podcast hosted by Toby Manhire with Annabelle Lee-Mather and Ben Thomas. For media nerds, Spinoff founder Duncan Greive releases The Fold every Monday morning. And When The Facts Change, hosted by Bernard Hickey, dives deep on the intersection of economics, business and politics in Aotearoa every Friday. If you want to learn more about the work we do and the people who do it, I host Behind the Story, speaking to Spinoff writers about the big story of the week, released every Friday afternoon.

And much, much more. The above are the things you can expect to see on The Spinoff every week. But that is less than 50% of what we do. As a small team (we have about 13 in editorial) we like to keep things interesting. While we have our consistent formats and offerings as outlined above, there are a number of approaches, big and small, that you can expect to see on any given week. We publish a lot of books, TV and live event reviews, as well as commentary on the big topics of the day. While we don't report daily news, if we get a juicy news tip, we follow it.

We have feature weeks, where we run a dozen stories exploring a single topic. This year we had Death Week and Travel Week. We spent a week counting down the Top 100 NZ TV shows of the 21st century. When there's big things happening, we'll have live blogs giving up-to-the-minute reports. We love rankings. And if someone decides they want to try to get from Stewart Island to Cape Reinga using only public transport, we figure out a way to make it happen.

If any of this sounds like something you have enjoyed or would appreciate, please consider becoming a member to allow us to continue to find new and innovative ways to tell the stories of New Zealand.

This week on Behind the Story

A feed takeover with a special edition of The Fold as me, our head of audience Anna Rawhiti-Connell and CEO Amber Easby join Duncan to discuss the future of The Spinoff following the publication of our open letter. We talk about what we’re asking for, why we’re asking for it, dig into some numbers that show just how radically our revenue picture has changed and explain why our audience is now our last, best shot at retaining the ability to carry on doing what we do.

Listen wherever you get your podcasts.

The brief but wonderful history of the Z Manu World Champs

Last summer’s inaugural Z Manu World Champs took Aotearoa by storm, turning a beloved pastime into a high-stakes showdown. Now the divebomb contest is back for summer 2024/25, supported by Z Energy. From backyard pools to national qualifiers, Kiwi of all ages are gathering to pop the ultimate manu for a chance to compete at the grand final in Tāmaki Makaurau, with the online Z Manu Wildcards giving manu fans the ability to get involved from anywhere around the country. Read more about the upcoming champs – and Z’s role in making them happen – in our story here (sponsored)

God defend the breast screeners of New Zealand

​In this week's Spinoff Essay, Anna Rawhiti-Connell reflects on having her first mammogram and her “Swiss” attitude towards her body.

“I am as delighted by efficiency as I am by tiny jam jars taken from hotels. I like to imagine the puzzle that got put together when systems came to be designed. As I whipped my T-shirt and bra off, I thought about the people who gamed out this tidy process. The people who decided it should flow like a drive-through and that you be given a little basket. The people who organise the contract for the cleaning of the robes each day. The people who are part of a system that politicians sometimes refer to as “a bloated bureaucracy”. The people pulling this publicly funded safety net taut as colleagues lose their jobs and departments are dismantled. The people who travel to work reading and hearing about how terrible everything in their corner of the world is. The people who keep turning up while being told that their system is broken and in crisis.”

As many of you will have already seen, on Thursday we published an open letter from The Spinoff’s CEO Amber Easby, myself and founder Duncan Greive outlining the financial situation we find ourselves in and why going public with a big, audacious goal to double the number of paying members we have is our last, best shot at retaining the ability to carry on doing what we do. Please read if you haven't yet. We can not thank you enough if you responded yesterday or are already a member. If you aren't a member, please consider becoming a member today.

Privatisation lost: How the Wellington Airport saga split the left

In Oliver Neas’s three-part series, the Wellington Airport is the central setting for a political melodrama. In May, the Wellington City Council — led by a Green Party mayor, Tory Whanau, and with a progressive majority — voted to sell the city’s airport shares and use the proceeds to set up an investment fund. It was pitched as a solution to the insurance problems of an earthquake-prone city; opponents saw the proposal as a betrayal of fundamental left-wing principles achieved through dirty tactics. The fallout has opened a chasm between politicians and the bureaucracy, exposed faultlines on the political left, and ultimately lead to the appointment a Crown observer. This is the story of the Wellington Airport sale – of the attempts to stop it, how those attempts were overcome, and how it all then fell apart.

Part 1: How the Wellington Airport saga split the left

Part 2: The Green Party vs the Green Party

Part 3: Inside the final vote for the future of Wellington Airport

How to start reading again this summer

It’s December and you’re fritzed. Your concentration is at an all-time low and you’re dredging every particle of energy from your very bone marrow to get to the end of the working year, when you can put your out-of-office on and finally go and watch Twisters and ruthlessly compare it to the tornado film that stole your heart back in the 90s, Twister, starring Helen Hunt, Bill Paxton and Philip Seymour-Hoffman.

And you should. We all need to embrace joy. Except, after the Twister-rama, books editor Claire Mabey is gently suggesting that we all turn off the internet, close down the screens, stop all the clocks and pick up a book from our dusty to-be-read piles.

If you’ve forgotten how to read for pleasure, totally relatable. Luckily she has tips for getting back into it.

The stories Spinoff readers spent the most time with this week

• This week’s Cover Story, as told to Madeleine Holden by Zeni Gibson about her near decade of violent harassment by a man she barely knew, is a must-read. You can also listen to an audio version of it, read by Anna Rawhiti-Connell

• The first instalment in Oliver Neas’s series on how the Wellington Airport saga split the left

• Madeleine Holden’s reflection on Zeni’s experience and the hundreds of thousands of New Zealand women being collectively failed by the official response to them being stalked and harassed.

• The mall rankings continue. It’s Wellington’s turn this time as Joel MacManus traverses the region’s six malls to find its number one.

• Toby Manhire farewells “the indomitable” Nikki Kaye

Recommended reads for your weekend

• It may still be November but Gabi Lardies has decided not to be a Grinch this Christmas. Here’s how and why

• Liam Rātana weighs up whether the All Blacks haka controversy was bold statement or a brand risk.

• The nation’s best advice columnist Hera Lindsay Bird helps a public servant losing hope. It’s applicable to everyone with a heart.

• Longform current affairs content has an expiry date on TVNZ+. Lyric Waiwiri-Smith asks what it means when things simply disappear.

• Alex Casey visits Willowbank, Christchurch’s first zoo, to get the origin story as the iconic wildlife reserve turns 50

• How will the select committee process on the Treaty Principles bill play out?

  Toby Manhire explains.

• An anonymous donor has bought a Te Tiriti handbook for every secondary school in New Zealand, Claire Mabey reports

• In an excerpt from Diana Wichtel’s tremendous new memoir, Unreel, she writes that Virginia Woolf might have made a decent TV reviewer.

• For your listening pleasure: Pōneke musician Sam Fowles shares his perfect weekend playlist.

• Shanti Mathias explains why public transport users may have to pay more for their ride.

Reader feedback of the week

• On All six malls in Wellington ranked from worst to best

“For me, Johnsonville Mall died the day Baron of Beef and their $4 box of hot chips closed. RIP to a real one :( "

• On The Indomitable Nikki Kaye

Says a lot about Nikki that in these hugely divisive political times, the most heartfelt & personal tributes come from those who are seen as "the Opposition parties". Rest in power Nikki.”

Thanks for reading.