A letter from Spinoff editor Madeleine Chapman

As we celebrate five years of The Bulletin, we're asking you to take your dedicated readership to the next level

Talofa lava,

No, the world is not ending with this unprecedented 3.30pm Bulletin, but there is something I’d like to ask as we celebrate The Bulletin’s fifth birthday today. You’re reading this because you value the news that The Bulletin delivers you each weekday morning. As we head further into an already eventful 2023, we have a big job ahead of us, so I ask you to consider deepening your commitment to The Spinoff and the work we do by becoming a Spinoff Member. 

When The Bulletin launched in March 2018, The Spinoff looked very different. We were a tiny team with a cool idea about packaging up the news in a beautiful, thoughtful way and giving it to our readers. In the five years since, we’ve had natural disasters, acts of terrorism and a pandemic. The Spinoff as a site has evolved to meet the needs of our readers, whether that be with illustrated Covid communications, live news updates or fast-response explainers. We’ve necessarily grown and changed some of the ways we approach the business side of the company.

Despite all this change, The Bulletin remains largely unchanged. Its purpose five years ago was to bring our readers the best of New Zealand media, thoughtfully curated by a real person and delivered to your inbox every weekday morning. Since its launch, about a thousand Bulletins that fulfill that original purpose have been sent to subscribers, for free, as promised.

That reliability has led to 37,000 people subscribing to The Bulletin, making it one of the most popular newsletters in the country. Each month, The Bulletin is read and opened over half a million times. And that’s awesome.

But it’s not an easy job. For one person to send a Bulletin out every morning requires that one person to be awake by 5am, to be scouring every media site in the country and to write on average 1400 words each weekday. Few people could do that job and we’ve been exceptionally lucky to have four of them in the role since 2018: Alex Braae, Justin Giovanetti, Anna Rawhiti-Connell and, most recently, Catherine McGregor. Each writer has their own style and tone but what we deliver to you has remained the same.

We’re a fiercely independent media company in Aotearoa but that also means we’re small and I think sometimes people forget how small our team is.

The Spinoff does not have a dedicated news squad or evening reporters. There’s no weekend crew. Which means when things happen, as they are wont to do, it’s a small group of us who take care of everything. When news breaks outside of regular working hours, we work.

Like many New Zealanders, I returned to work in January this year hoping for a bit of quiet. Not laziness, just normality. 

When the rain that caused the Auckland floods first started it was Friday afternoon and we were headed home. As the waters rose, the mayor’s office silent, it was clear people were worried so we clocked back in and got to work. The Spinoff is at its best during breaking news but it requires our very small team (including the Bulletin editor) to work around the clock to inform our readers. 

We know that this year has only just begun, and that it will be a testing year for many. I am under no illusions that this will be a busy year for us here at The Spinoff, with three breaking news events in the first three months and an election on the horizon. 

We’re excited for it (it’s what we do best), we know that stress and flexible lives are the nature of the job, and we want to do more. There’s rural community stories that Chris Schulz is dying to tell. There’s press gallery visits for our political reporters to be in the thick of it. And there’s dozens of incredible writers I’d love you all to read, who just haven’t been given the chance. 

As Bulletin subscribers, you are among the most dedicated and regular readers of The Spinoff. You see the best of us every morning and we are so grateful for your continued support. I ask that you now make it official by becoming a Spinoff member. It will allow us to continue delivering as we have for the past five years, while growing our coverage in the midst of often terrifying times. 

If you are already a Spinoff member, thank you. Your committed support and advocacy for what we do here at The Spinoff is one of things that gets us out of bed early in the morning and keeps us going late at night. 

Madeleine Chapman,
Editor of The Spinoff