NBR Radio weekend rumble: Wilfred “Rocky” Lane, the launch of Scout and non-sale of Lochinver station
The NBR crew throw around some of the week's top stories on NBR Radio and on-demand via MyNBR Radio.
NBR reporters Hamish McNicol, Chelsea Armitage, Tim Hunter and Jason Walls and media columnist David Cohen throw around some of the week’s most thought provoking, titillating and exciting stories.
Mr McNicol kicks off proceedings by talking about the fascinating story of Wilfred “Rocky” Lane, featured in this week’s print edition.
Mr McNicol says the headshot-surviving, professional-pool-playing, soon-to-be author with a possible movie deal on the way was “one hell of a story.”
“It was definitely an interesting phone call, the hardest bit was fitting an intro into 40 words,” he says.
The other big story this week is the groundbreaking tale of TVNZ and Newstalk ZB’s Mike Hosking vacuuming his Ferrari on the street.
Ms Armitage says while the just-launched Scout is apparently trying to dig into the lives of local celebrities, that’s not what has really featured on the gossip website this week.
Mr Cohen says it is perplexing that the arrival of Scout should come on the same week as we have seen a significant week of layoffs in the more serious corners media environment.
“You do wonder about the ultimate end of this game that we find ourselves in, where celebrity journalism seems to go ever more up as anything serious – including financial intelligence – goes down,” Mr Cohen says.
That said, there have been serious stories reported this week.
A case in point is Paula Bennett and Louise Upston’s Thursday announcement that they had torpedoed the sale of Lochinver Station to Chinese company Shanghai Pengxin.
Mr Hunter says this has been a story that a lot of people have been interested in.
“There are two main schools of thought on this topic: the first is the government has no business interfering with private property’s transactions what-so-ever, and the owners of the stations should be able to sell to whomever they please.
“The other side of it is that there are concerns that if property transactions are allowed to continue ‘willy-nilly’, we’ll end up being tenants in our own land and this will ultimately be negative for New Zealand’s welfare.”
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NBR Radio
Fri, 18 Sep 2015
Fri, 18 Sep 2015
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NBR Radio weekend rumble: Wilfred “Rocky” Lane, the launch of Scout and non-sale of Lochinver station
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