My first rodeo with the National Business Review was in 1989 when my friend Jenni McManus suggested I might like to work for the publication.
Then a general news reporter in radio, my initial response was "hell, no – business is boring".
On reflection, I decided I was simply scared I wouldn’t measure up despite my years of journalism experience, so rang back and said "yes".
I nearly blew it on the formal job interview with then editor Warren Berryman after we had a robust and spirited debate on the merits or otherwise of the trade union movement rather than discussing my own merits.
Afterwards McManus queried whether I really wanted the job? “Not if I have to agree with his views,” was my reply (or words to that effect).
Steep learning curve
Soon after I started and it was a steep learning curve, understanding the jargon and nuances of the business world. In the aftermath of the 1987 sharemarket crash, the focus was on daily court visits as companies went under and directors made bankrupt or worse. I was pretty proud of my first front page feature a few weeks later - on waterfront union reform.
The more involved I got in business reporting, the more interesting it became. Money is at the heart of it all but the stories are very human – people risking their house to fund a startup, angel investors recycling money they’ve made back into new companies, export companies trying to be world best in their niche from down under, investors riding the highs of those that get it right and the downs of those that don’t.
Falling pregnant later that year with my eldest daughter, who just turned 30 this month, my first stint with NBR was short and sweet. On return from maternity leave a year later, Barry Colman came back into the ownership seat.
The ‘smiling assassins’ as the two Australian former Fairfax executives in charge of the paper were known behind their back, had found the going tough and ended up selling back to Colman who merged NBR with his replacement business weekly, The Examiner. An upset Berryman and McManus, who had helped start up The Examiner, ended up leaving NBR the following year and founding their own business rag, The Independent.
When I resigned to join them in the startup in 1992, security guards frogmarched me (then pregnant with my second child) out of NBR’s doors so I couldn’t take any of my story files with me (pre-Google this mattered). They were already at home of course.
The Independent, supported by businessman the late Tony Timpson, struggled valiantly for years with little money to spare to take on the more established NBR.
Winning battles
NBR won the battle against first another newcomer, NZ Business Times, which didn’t last long on the scene, and then against The Independent. which closed in 2010. That decision was made by owner, Fairfax, which had bought the paper from McManus just four years earlier and struggled to make it profitable. As we’ve already seen with Covid-19, history often repeats itself.
I returned to NBR in 2017, keen to push the online offering and joined Tim Hunter in taking on the co-editorship in late 2018.
More than 30 years on since I first worked here, the challenge remains the same despite NBR having become online only and funded predominantly by subscribers. The challenge is to feature great business stories, well told for readers, whether their views are right-wing, left-leaning, or anywhere in-between.
