What does Rolling Stone want with NZ?
A legendary music magazine comes to town.
Kia ora and welcome to The Weekend, which is a surprise long weekend! I’ve decided to provide Weekend readers some exclusive seasonal conversation starters for any and all upcoming social encounters. Weather chat: it is getting warmer, nice that the earth’s axis has a tilt in it. Plant chat: spring flowers are very pretty and abundant. Daylight savings chat (it’s tomorrow btw): wild that the government reminds us that hours are a human construction twice a year. The Weekend’s sponsor chat: why not buy some Coffee Supreme? Local election chat: it’s a good time to truck yourself to the nearest postbox to cast your vote. If you’ve run out of things to say on these subjects, you might want to read on for stories about the Hamilton mayoral hopefuls, Rolling Stone magazine entering New Zealand, stigma against fat people, and why you can’t advertise in te reo Māori online.
-Shanti Mathias, staff writer
If magazines are dead, why is Rolling Stone launching in NZ?
It was born during the Summer of Love of 1967, and is undoubtedly the most famous music magazine in the world. Now, for the first time, Rolling Stone has an official presence in Aotearoa. Launched at the end of August with a glitzy awards ceremony in Auckland and an issue with The Wiggles (yes, really) on the cover, Rolling Stone Australia-NZ is a gamble: a new print product at a time when magazines are in serious trouble. On top of that, there are doubts that the magazine can properly cover the breadth of Aotearoa’s music scene from its Australian base. To answer those questions, Chris Schulz spoke to the mag's editor-in-chief Poppy Reid and asked her if we'll ever see a New Zealand artist on the cover. "I would love that," she replied, cautiously. “It needs to have a global story, some global impact.”
Weekend watch: Alice Snedden on fatphobia
In the latest episode of Bad News, Alice interviews health minister Andrew Little about some of the stigma that faces fat people wanting to access healthcare and live their best lives. Little, it turns out, will go to great lengths to avoid saying the word “fat”. As writer Natasha Matila-Smith writes in her review of the webseries My Mad Fat Diary, published to accompany the Bad News episode, fat people in the media are often depicted as inherently undesirable, which can create another layer of self-loathing and mental health risk for those affected. But, as Bad News explores, much of the narrative around health and fatness is untrue or unhealthy.
Hamilton mayoral candidates want to turn the city around
In local election coverage, Aimie Cronin interviews Paula Southgate and Greg Taylor, Hamilton’s mayor and deputy mayor, both of whom are currently campaigning for the top job. Cronin finds that Southgate has concerns about Three Waters and government-mandated intensification, but wants to do her best with the situation as it is, while Taylor promises to push harder against the central government. I particularly enjoyed Cronin’s assessment of Southgate and Taylor as consummate politicians, both expertly extricating themselves from her attempts to get them on the record about possible rates increases.
Meanwhile I profiled David Meates and Phil Mauger as they campaign to lead Ōtautahi
Why can’t you advertise on Google in te reo?
Google’s ad platform is ridiculously profitable, and one of the main reasons Google is as huge and successful as it is. But advertising is only supported in certain languages, and te reo Māori isn’t one of them. For New Zealand businesses wanting to use these tools to get their product into the hands of Māori audiences, that’s a problem. My colleague Reweti Kohere was wondering why this is the case; he talked to some experts about why language support by tech corporations is important, and found some theories for Google not supporting te reo (tldr: they don’t think Māori audiences will be lucrative enough). It’s easy to dismiss internet advertising, but the marketing business is pretty key to making the wheels on the digital bus go round, and Reweti’s piece is a thoughtful response to that.
Four years ago, Te-Whanganui-a-Tara voted to become a te reo Māori city. How is it going?
Long live the … meme?
When Princess Diana died, it was sensational, shocking – the biggest news story in the world, for weeks and weeks (I was not alive at this time but I believe everyone who has said this is the case). When Elizabeth II died two weeks ago at the age of 96, it was more expected. But in the past 25 years, the advent of the internet has totally changed how big events are processed. Nothing is sacred; any news is ripe for memefication, whether it is the war in Ukraine or the death of the Queen. Anna Rawhiti-Connell, who writes The Bulletin, experienced whiplash as she went from consuming the solemn news as reported by the mainstream media to seeing how millions of internet-addled people were responding to it: by cracking jokes. “Social media… has crunched the Queen between a billion sharp teeth, only to open its mouth and regurgitate microscopic distortions of her image into the faces of anyone willing to watch,” she writes in her essay on this disorientating media moment.
The Queen’s death is a reminder that a landed aristocracy hold much of New Zealand’s wealth — and it’s not the aristocracy you’re thinking of.
Everything else
It’s a long weekend so I raided The Spinoff archives as well as stories from this week and paired most of the links in this section for extra reading + watching + listening. Enjoy!
Jump Jam’s creator Brett Fairweather says the original songs are still popular in schools across the world + a Scratched episode about why Fairweather invented the hit dance aerobics programme in the first place
Mental and physical health really aren’t distinct + a read on why dentistry and medicine are different disciplines
When I was little I found it very exciting when we occasionally got to help (as much as a nine year old can “help”) milk the neighbour’s cows, and this essay about milk reminded me of the weirdness of drinking something from another animal’s udder. Pair it with this on how moving to a farm made Nicola Harvey a climate activist
Why the philosophy of longtermism feels so uncomfortable even if it makes a good point about people in the future & why poverty eradication needs to focus on human flourishing
Tim Shadbolt may have done his dash, but Nobby Clark and Marcus Lush both think they’re top contenders for Invercargill mayor
The brutal, delirious experience of recovering from a concussion & a review of a book about brain injury in professional sports
50 million Indians shared geographical information with their government which raises big questions about privacy + a profile of Netsafe’s Brent Carey and the challenges of monitoring New Zealand’s internet
The links between the beauty industry and fossil fuels & the complexities of using pine trees for carbon capture
Spinoff quiz: King Charles or Mike King? + New Zealand media go to farcical lengths to find royal anecdotes
The three horsemen of the housing apocalypse & the housing theory of everything
Game problems: computers are killing chess & the downfall of a Minecraft crypto empire (the only job left is being a pro gamer!)
And finally, a niche music deepcut: I found the Hungarian band Platon Karataev through the Soundcloud algorithm many years ago, I have no idea what this song is about, but very much enjoyed this live performance. Music truly is the universal language.
