The Fold

The Fold is taking a short break over summer. We'll be back with new episodes soon, but until then here's one of our favourites from 2021. Emma Espiner is a writer, commentator, podcaster and doctor. She won Opinion Writer of the Year at the Voyager Media Awards in 2020, the same year she completed her medical degree – her podcast about that final year as a Māori med student navigating New Zealand...

The Fold is taking a short break over summer. We'll be back with new episodes soon, but until then here's one of our favourites from 2021. Lucy Blakiston is one of three young New Zealand women behind Shit You Should Care About, a media company built around an Instagram account which was started in 2018 to break down the barriers of entry to news and issues. The account now has over three million...

The Fold is taking a short break over summer. We'll be back with new episodes soon, but until then here's one of our favourites from 2021. While most press gallery journalists go to sleep and dream of politics, NZ Herald's Derek Cheng has another true love: climbing. Duncan first met him at a press gallery party, where he was barefoot, cooking up sausages on a barbecue, and since learning of the j...

Hosted by Gone By Lunchtime’s Toby Manhire and featuring representatives from The Real Pod, The Fold, Nē? and Dietary Requirements, SUPERPOD 2021 is the crossover podcast event we’ve been waiting all year for. Join us as we relive the highs and lows and heroes and villains of the longest, shortest year in living memory. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In the final episode for 2021, The Fold enters monopod formation as Duncan Greive attempts to summarise the last 12 months in the New Zealand media industry. What were the biggest stories, strongest trends and most significant changes, how have all the big players been performing and what does it all mean? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Comedian Guy Williams became a household name in New Zealand off the back of his regular appearances on Jono and Ben, and has remained on television in a “volunteer journalist” capacity on his own show New Zealand Today. That show now has a spinoff podcast of the same name, which Williams is co-hosting with former guest Karen Hill of viral “wants her $20 back” fame. He joins Duncan Greive to talk...

Former Wheel Blacks captain Dan Buckingham started out as a researcher and presenter for TVNZ’s long-running disability docuseries Attitude in 2008. Now he’s the CEO of Attitude Pictures and chair of The Attitude Trust, which hosts the annual Attitude Awards. He joined Duncan Greive to talk about on screen representation for disability, which has been described internationally as the “forgotten di...

Cate Slater is the director of content at TVNZ, which last week held its upfronts announcing what’s in store for next year. She joined Duncan Greive to talk about the organisation’s Aotearoatanga journey, a 2022 content schedule with an emphasis on local drama over international reality TV franchises, the rise of digital and OnDemand and the legacy of outgoing CEO Kevin Kenrick. Learn more about y...

Glen Kyne is the SVP and general manager of Discovery ANZ, the new owners of Three. Last week the company had their first ever upfronts revealing what the channel and its wider ecosystem will look like in 2022 and beyond. He joins Duncan to discuss all the big talking points.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In a very special The Fold / The Real Pod crossover episode, Duncan is joined by Jane Yee to delve into the first ever Discovery upfronts, in which Three’s new owner just announced a bunch of new shows, two new channels and a very reality TV-heavy new direction. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Though he's lived in New Zealand for more than two decades, Ahmed Osman (Third Culture Minds) struggles to remember ever seeing anybody who looked like him on the screen here. The Somali-New Zealander joins Duncan Greive to talk about how diversity and representation are handled when it comes to media funding, the flow-on consequences that has and the opportunities we’re missing out on as a result...

Rudy Kokx is the director of Coffee News New Zealand. In this episode he joins Duncan for a chat about how this ubiquitous publication gets made, and their recent decision to get off Facebook. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Bailey Mackey is the CEO of Pango Productions, the production company behind last Saturday’s eight-hour live Vaxathon. He joins The Fold to tell the story of how they pulled it all together in a little over a week.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Returning guest Hal Crawford (Crawford Media) joins The Fold for a discussion about Facebook in light of the Wall Street Journal’s recent Facebook Files investigation. What did they reveal, and what can be done about it? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Tim Worrall and Miriama McDowell are two of the key creatives behind Head High, a critically acclaimed and pioneering drama which just wrapped its second season on Three. The weird news is, instead of discussing where the series might go next, we’re talking about why it just got cancelled. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Toby Morris’s comics (The Side Eye, The Pencilsword) have been making an impact in New Zealand for some time, but his collaborations with Dr Siouxsie Wiles communicating public health messages around the Covid-19 pandemic went truly global. Released under Creative Commons, these illustrations have been used by governments worldwide and ultimately the World Health Organisation. At the same time as...

Samson Samasoni started his career as a journalist in the 1980s, went to work for the Ministry of Pacific Island Affairs, then had a long and fascinating career in communications around the world, working in locations as diverse as Saudi Arabia and Tokelau before returning home to specialise in communicating to Pasifika. In this episode, we discuss NZ on Air's Where are the Audiences research, the...

Janet Wilson is an experienced journalist and public relations consultant who last year took on the role of chief press secretary for the National Party during their ill-fated election campaign, working first under the leadership of Todd Muller, then Judith Collins. In this episode she joins Duncan Greive for an explosive interview in which she discusses Collins' leadership as a threat to the part...

MONOPOD! An in-depth look into some shocking new audience data – and what it means for all of us. Duncan Greive goes solo this week, taking a deep breath before diving into the latest edition of 'Where are the Audiences?', a fascinating annual piece of research commissioned by NZ On Air. It's 46 gushing minutes which seek to try and understand what has happened to our media consumption over the la...

Dylan Cleaver is one of New Zealand’s most acclaimed sports writers, with over 25 years experience at the NZ Herald. A couple of months ago he left the Herald to start The Bounce, a new thrice-weekly sports newsletter, via Substack. He joined Duncan Greive over Zoom this week to talk through the move, how sports journalism has changed in recent years and his investigations into the hidden toll of...

Danyl Mclauchlan is a Wellington based writer. He wrote politics blog The Dim Post back in the blogging era and now writes regularly for The Spinoff, where his recent review of Andrey Mir’s book Postjournalism and the Death of Newspapers. The media after Trump: manufacturing anger and polarization was published. In this episode he joins Duncan Greive over Zoom to discuss the concept of postjournal...

Jon Wild was the series producer and director of The Apprentice Aotearoa – an old-fashioned one-night-a-week series in the era of multi night reality behemoths, and one of the most fun-to-watch New Zealand reality TV series in a long time. In this episode he tells Duncan Greive about making that show, as well as New Zealand's Next Top Model and The Bachelor, the importance of casting and the way t...

Emma Espiner is a writer, commentator, podcaster and doctor. She won Opinion Writer of the Year at the Voyager Media Awards in 2020, the same year she completed her medical degree – her podcast about that final year as a Māori med student navigating New Zealand's inequitable health system, Getting Better, was then named Best Narrative Podcast at the 2021 Voyagers. In this episode she talks with Du...

Dan Ahwa is the creative director at Viva magazine, the NZ Herald’s fashion, beauty, food and wellbeing publication. The title has been running since 1998 and stands out among other newspaper-inserted magazines for how well-crafted and curated it is, with its own distinct aesthetic and values. In this episode, Dan talks to Duncan about surviving the pandemic cutbacks last year to launch a new glos...

Musician and actor Troy Kingi is half way through an ambitious mission to release 10 albums in 10 different genres over 10 years. He joins Duncan Greive on The Fold this week to talk about the project and making his latest album Black Sea Golden Ladder, his mixed feelings about appearing on The Masked Singer NZ earlier this year, the changing music economy and what it’s like being an artist during...