“Right now, every left-leaning, media-savvy, university-educated hipster you know (and probably their baby-boomer parents) are reading The Spinoff,” wrote Jeremy Olds for Stuff in 2016. Hipsters no longer exist, but that descriptor probably still holds true of the site that turns 10-years-old this week – a double digit milestone worth celebrating in a chaotic media landscape.
The site’s success as an indie and irreverent digital platform that refused to adhere to traditional publishing stereotypes has also inspired us, a lot. We’ve been readers since 2014, when founder Duncan Greive launched it with Alex Casey as the only staff writer. The team supported Ensemble before we were even a thing: Duncan was an early sounding board and connector (he’s friends with Rebecca, and was in the same journalism class as Zoe), as was former GM Kerryanne Nelson. They helped promote Ensemble when it did launch, and when we sold to Stuff. We once had a (pretty loose) content partnership, and co-published a 2020 report about allegations of photographer misconduct.
That is all to say, we love their work, and the people behind it past and present. To mark 10 years of ‘the spinny’, we wanted to highlight some of them: eight wāhine who we personally admire, some well-known, others deliberately behind-the-scenes (there are others, but we didn’t want this to become as long as Duncan’s 10 year retrospective).
WHO'S WHO
Alex Casey Your favourite writer's favourite writer, Alex has been there since the start (with some sabbaticals). Funny and frank, she has written about TV, beauty, feminism, tampons, gossip and more; she has also reported several heavy hitting investigations, including allegations 'behind the pages' of Pavement magazine. One of my favourite Alex Casey pieces is a classic of her observational genius: when she spent an afternoon with the retired ladies of The Red Hat Society. –ZWA
Madeleine Chapman The Spinoff's current editor began as an intern in 2016, an example of brilliant talent spotting and growth. Rebecca and I were both always a bit intimidated by her, but I met and got to know her a little better during The Next Page: Editors programme (but still slightly intimidated by her talent, tbh). Smart as hell with a dry humour, Mad's opinion pieces are always incisive; her rankings, hilarious; her features, some of NZ’s best. –ZWA
Amber Easby When Duncan stepped down as CEO in 2023, even his closest friends were blindsided by the decision to leave. His replacement, however, surprised no one. Amber, who had been the head of video since 2019 (and began as a freelance producer in 2017), was an experienced, driven and calm producer who was able to harness those skills and step into the hole left by the founder. –RW
Niki Greive: Known to many as ‘Duncan’s wife’, people may be surprised to learn how incredibly instrumental this quiet personality has been to the success of the business which was launched when she was home with a newborn and a toddler. Later, it was her work as a lawyer at the serious fraud office that supported the young family through the initial hard start-up years. Niki is a director of the company and chairperson of the board. –RW
Leonie Kapea Hayden The Spinoff’s first Ātea editor, Leonie’s time at The Spinoff between 2017 and 2021 is synonymous with both the important work she did for and with te ao Māori and her hysterically dry contributions to the brilliant and much-lamented On the Rag podcast. –RW
Charlotte Muru-Lanning Charlotte was a staff writer from 2019-2023 before becoming food editor at Metro, and hers quickly became a byline that I looked forward to seeing and reading. She has an obvious and genuine love for food – the actual ingredients – while always putting it into the context of life, politics, legislation, culture, community and te ao Māori (her piece about eating while grieving was particularly poignant). She is a great fashion writer, too! –ZWA
Kerryanne Nelson When we started Ensemble, Kerryanne had just left The Spinoff where she had worked since 2016 as general manager then in a special projects role – and she was a guiding light of advice, kindness and honesty to Rebecca and I. Clever and strategic, her tenure at The Spinoff saw plenty of innovation, including the launch of a members programme. We also have the same taste in fashion. –ZWA
Lyric Waiwiri-Smith One of the newest recruits, we like to think Lyric learnt everything that made her great through moonlighting as an Ensemble writer during her previous role as a reporter at Stuff. However, we suspect Lyric was in fact born great, and it’s been amazing to watch her blossom in the short time she’s been a staff writer since joining in July. –RW
What’s your proudest moment or story, or ‘most The Spinoff’ story/moment/memory, over the 10 years?
Alex Casey: Publishing 4000 words about the mystery Hobsonville ham on International Women’s Day would probably be up there. I think it perfectly sums up the kind of journalistic rigour, absurd humour and random celebrity cameos that people can expect from The Spinoff on any given day.
Madeleine Chapman: Probably the Scratched episode and accompanying feature on Heath Davis from 2022. Heath was (and remains) the only Black Cap to speak publicly about his sexuality and it was such an honour to help tell his story. It took years to get that episode over the line and, while I had to write the profile in a few hours, I think it’s some of the best writing I’ve ever done.
Amber Easby: The Ruia Morrison episodes of Scratched. Being at the 2020 ASB Classic to see Ruia present the korowai woven in her honour to Serena Williams was a very cool and special thing. And they were the first thing I worked on with Mad.
Niki Greive: I loved it when Hayden [Donnell] found Rosemary Dempsey, the inventor of kiwi onion dip, living in a retirement village in Auckland.
Leonie Kapea Hayden: My favourite piece I wrote was about the Bob Jones court case, where he sued Renae Maihi for calling him racist. I then watched him prove, in a courtroom, without a shadow of doubt that she was right.
The most Spinoff-y moment that springs to mind was being invited to the launch of a very expensive Steinway piano. A scruffy handful of us went along, keen for the free booze. We were the only media that showed up. At some point it became clear that the second part of the evening was a fancy presentation to actual potential customers that had the means to drop half a million dollars on a piano. Instead of kicking us out, PR legend Michelle Lafferty just moved us to the side to finish our drinks and so we stood there in our jeans and backpacks quaffing free champagne while people in gowns and tuxedos piled in. That us versus them attitude that somewhat defined the early days of The Spinoff was never so stark.
Our podcast and video series On The Rag, with Alex Casey and Michèle A'Court, remain some of the most joyful moments of my life. I still have people approach me and tell me how much they loved it.
Charlotte Muru-Lanning: Not exactly a single moment but all the many times my editors let me write about the Fair Pay Agreements because I thought it mattered. I’m forever appreciative of being given that freedom to write about legislation that was quite technical, time-consuming, not super click-worthy, always dry… and then, after all that, unceremoniously discarded by the new government.
Kerryanne Nelson: I think I’m most proud of launching The Spinoff Members, which we did just before Covid lockdowns happened. It was actually a great time to have it live because we had so much traffic coming to the site that we could try to encourage to join our community. We knew that the sentiment was generally very positive toward The Spinoff and that we had a huge amount of regular readers, so it was an attempt to create another – more sustainable – revenue stream that wasn’t sponsorship or ad revenue. It was pretty transformative for us at the time, and allowed us to hire more writers and focus on long-form editorial work that would otherwise be very hard to get off the ground.
Another favourite moment that continues to make me laugh is our partnerships editor Simon Day jumping out of the (quite gross) work wheelie bin multiple times a day in an attempt to scare his colleagues on video for ‘scare week’ partner content. Real commitment to the job right there. Also, The Spinoff Book! We made a book!
Lyric Waiwiri-Smith: I’ve literally been here for two months, so I’ll choose the series that got me into reading The Spinoff in the first place: On The Rag. The chats about feminism, racism and the many, many Jacinda Ardern and period stories were incredibly influential to me as a highly-opinionated teenage wāhine. What a time to be alive.
The Spinoff is a success story of local and ‘indie’ media, so we would love to hear how you feel about the state of the media in Aotearoa right now. We want some industry insider analysis from people who aren’t Shayne, Colin, Tim or Duncan (sorry Duncan!).
Alex: This isn’t imposter syndrome or me being coy: I have absolutely no idea what’s going on, sorry. All I know is that it feels more important than ever to shout about, share and support the things people are making that you enjoy.
Mad: As someone who both writes and reads, it is increasingly apparent how little feature writing there is these days. Five years ago I had a handful of favourite local writers from other outlets who reliably wrote chunky, narrative features. Now, in the interests of evolving and speeding up, I could go weeks without reading a genuine feature online (outside of The Spinoff) which sucks! And I think a lot of readers don’t realise it’s missing, to the point where I worry that really good feature writing will be completely unappreciated by the end of the decade.
Amber: It is tough out there, for sure, and sometimes it feels like things are shifting at an alarming pace. We’re fortunate to be a relatively small, digital-first organisation and not burdened with heavy layers of infrastructure. And we’re fortunate to have a strong relationship with our audience. These things make me cautiously optimistic about the future.
Niki: I think it’s a really important part of a functioning society, and it’s not really working right now. I think we have to fix it. But on the other hand – I’ve loved the coverage of the Polkinghorne trial.
Leonie: I’ve recently made the move to communications (keeping that journalism to comms pipeline active) and I’ve noticed with mainstream newsrooms, there’s little analysis that goes on within a lot of news stories. Obviously, I’m more attuned to stories about the agency I work for, but often quotes and insights are dropped into stories that connect or even contradict other people’s comments in the same story. I find the writers rarely interrogate what those competing ideas might mean, or if one holds more weight than the other. People decrying the lack of editors and subs in newsrooms is nothing new, but it seems particularly stark these days.
On a positive note, I’m heartened by the continuing success of platforms like Re:News and The D*List (although they need more support then they’re getting). Our younger writers are onto it.
Charlotte: I do get anxious about it, but I’m also – maybe naively – hopeful that things might change for the better. Journalism is an ecosystem and so what weighs on my mind most is the type of journalism that breaks stories or gives us those raw, essential reports. Those roles have been shrinking, and I’m fully aware that the kind of writing I do – whether it’s analysis, features, or opinion pieces – depends heavily on those journalists who do that initial groundwork.
In an effort to be practical about things, I’ve put my $15 a fortnight tax cut toward becoming a Spinoff member which at least makes me feel like I’m doing something.
I also think there was a kind of under-discussed crisis in the media before the current one, which is the reliance within some organisations on overworked and underpaid young journalists – where burnout is essentially built into their roles. On that note, if you’re a journalist you should join the union.
Kerryanne: I feel pretty sad about the state of media commercial sustainability in New Zealand right now. I will also take this opportunity to highlight the especially grim state of arts and culture media. I was editor of the Groove Guide back when Real Groove was going strong and arts and culture media seemed to be everywhere (even on the telly!). I don’t have any hot takes or ideas to sustainably monetise digital media, but I think that as a consumer, if you want to read/listen/watch good quality media, outside of publicly funded channels, then you need to pay for it.
I’ll also point to a piece of research, New Mirrors, released by CNZ last year by Rosabel Tan and James Wenley, who spoke to a huge amount of clever people working across the arts, culture and media sector and very clearly, I think, pointed out the big challenges, and some possible interventions.
I do think there’s a lot of great New Zealand screen content being made right now, but discoverability seems to be a problem here due to so much platform fragmentation.
Lyric: Hmmmm!!! People in the media writing about the media is a funny thing, and I say this as someone who wakes up on Sunday morning and immediately turns on Mediawatch, then gossips about Media Insider throughout the week – but I also often think, does anyone actually really care about this shit other than us?
I guess it’s unique for me, because I’m still relatively new to this industry – I’ve been in it for less than five years, and in that time every major news outlet in New Zealand has undergone restructuring. Having come from an incredibly large newsroom, where we were on the breaking news grind and preparing to be TV stars, to quite a small one where longform writing is king, has shown me that there are so many ways to tell an impactful story with flair.
Humour is also key to what has made The Spinoff successful – whether it’s intelligent, wry humour in an entertainment story or political analysis. That’s rare in media! How would you describe the humour or personality of The Spinoff – and how is that ‘taught’ to the team…? Can that be taught?
Alex: I think it is just about encouraging people to write in their true voice and not feel inhibited by the traditional detached journalism style. Toby Manhire once passed on the advice to write your draft like you are writing an email to a good friend. I always find that really useful to return to, especially as it’s extremely important to me to make my friends laugh at all times.
Mad: I’m not sure you can teach a sense of humour but I think The Spinoff has always been very open to different kinds of humour, which helps. Some of the funniest writing we’ve published from staff writers has been written by otherwise very serious writers. Everyone can be funny with the right topic and format. It’s just a matter of finding them.
Amber: We do talk a lot about ‘The Spinoff tone’, the mix of high and low, the fast and the slow. I think that’s one of the reasons people want to work here in the first place. The writers and editors who have been here a long time are generous with their knowledge, which helps.
Niki: I don’t think funny can be taught, in writing or anywhere. The Spinoff is funny, when it needs to be, and attracts people with a sense of humour to write it and read it.
Leonie: The Spinoff SOH is absorbed rather than taught. Certainly, in my day it was born from trading zingers across the office all the livelong day with Toby Manhire, Alex Casey, Mad Chapman, Josie Adams, Don Rowe, Duncan (although Dunc was often the butt of the joke). At the end of the day, I think the signature tone of The Spinoff is Alex Casey’s, it still lives in the walls. Silly and smart, observational, self-deprecating, intimate. She’s one of the funniest people to ever touch a keyboard.
Charlotte: The Spinoff’s brand of humour probably works so well because it’s irreverent and biting, but never mean spirited – it feels like it’s almost always deployed to underscore how absurd an unfair or truly stupid situation is. But this is a big insecurity for me! I struggle to write (intentionally) funny things so I’m just in awe of those writers who can.
Kerryanne: Yeah, I think The Spinoff has always been very, very good at not taking itself too seriously, and I do think that comes from its roots in TV coverage – in particular Alex Casey’s brilliant voice. Also, Jose Barbosa in the early days too.
There is so much dry content in the world that might be very newsworthy or make you smarter, but jeez, we also need something to make us laugh – or at least smile and forward to our mates. I don’t think it’s a thing that’s ‘taught’ to writers, but it’s the encouragement of The Spinoff to let people bring their personalities into the content and embrace the ‘silly’ ideas that no one else would write about.
Lyric: Having read The Spinoff for many, many years, I think I was quite familiar with the style ahead of going into a job interview and somehow managed to convince Mad and Amber of that too. When you read something for so long, I feel it starts to really influence the way you write, but I also think that it’s hard to teach a person how to imitate a certain prose, and that it’s more valuable to just figure out how to use your own voice instead of someone else’s.
I was lucky at my previous role at Stuff, which is quite a traditional newsroom, to be able to use my personal voice and flair for some stories and explore what my own style is. I think this is really important for young writers and journalists so we can set ourselves apart, and know we can offer something others can’t. At my first university journalism class, John Campbell spoke to my cohort and told us our most important skill coming into this industry is our own unique voice. I’ve always remembered that.
The Spinoff attracts incredible talent, but particularly, from our point of view, women. Why do you think that is?
Alex: It helps that we have women in every senior position at the company, but even before that we had a pretty flat hierarchy so it always felt like a more accommodating space. We also wrote heaps about feminism and reality television in the early days, which us ladies famously love to harp on about.
Mad: Journalism is a very old profession and has followed a pretty stringent hierarchy from the beginning. The Spinoff being (relatively) young meant that hierarchy couldn’t stand, even if Duncan had tried (he didn’t).
Amber: Honestly, it’s been like that since the start. Alex was The Spinoff’s first writer, Mad the first intern, Leonie the first Ātea editor and Kerryanne the first GM. Pretty great decision-making on our founder Duncan’s part. And now, we have a whole layer of senior leadership of incredible women – including our editor Mad, our Head of Audience Anna Rawhiti-Connell, our Head of Commercial Elisa Rivera and our General Manager Sophie Dowson.
Niki: Similar to the humour answer – it’s advocated for women, hired women, published them at a high volume and put them in key positions. That starts to feed off itself, I think.
Leonie: It’s a safe place for women and femme people to be silly, fierce, intellectual, into sports, into pop culture. Having Alex as the first staff writer paved the way, I think. Mad Chapman slinking her way in not long after as this undefinable savant of culture, especially with her interest in uncomfortable writing assignments (like the time she cycled to Huntly) meant that there was no gendered “normal” to conform to.
Charlotte: As a Māori woman, I was drawn to an approach where I wasn’t expected to remove my identity from my work, which is something I think is impossible for anyone to do anyway. It’s also a place filled with good people who genuinely care about the work – that must help too!
Kerryanne: Because the vibe of the site is fun, voice-y and irreverent. And women are often not allowed to be fun, voice-y and irreverent.
Lyric: In my time as a loyal Spinoff reader, I hadn’t actually made this connection until I was sitting in the office one day, looked around and realised the majority of people working around me are women, and how nice that is. Looking back at the staff members of yore (and the OGs still here), I think female voices and leadership has always been a part of The Spinoff’s DNA. We have lots of lovely ladies around here, like Alice Neville and Maddie Holden who hold down a lot of editing, and my talented fellow staff writers Gabi Lardies and Shanti Mathias. There’s also the all-female commercial team, and mostly-female general management and audience teams. What a treat.
Some of you have left The Spinoff, and a few have since come back. Why did you feel compelled to leave? If you came back, what drove that decision? We’re interested from the perspective of ‘career’/work progression, and how TS impacted your own.
Alex: I left in 2020 after being approached to work in reality television. After so many years of writing about the genre (and making what I soon found out were enormously incorrect assumptions about how the sausage is made) I simply had to see it for myself. I met a lot of great people and learned a lot of useful things about storytelling, but I realised pretty quickly that I much preferred writing about reality television, rather than making it.
Madeleine: I left in early 2020 after comprehensively burning myself out over four years – don’t recommend trying to write two books alongside a full-time job. Leaving allowed me to a) view The Spinoff from the outside for the first time and shed some of that baggage, and b) experience other working environments as a contractor to see if I was missing anything. When Duncan offered the editor job it was something I knew in my soul that I could only do, and survive, because I had that break in perspective.
Amber: The first thing I produced for The Spinoff was a webseries called Get It to Te Papa. Big idea, tiny budget. After 10 months of working like crazy for not very much money, I returned to producing commercials. I hated it. Working at The Spinoff, all things felt possible. I was back here a month later.
Niki: I haven’t left! Unfortunately I can’t.
Leonie: I left to pursue study of te reo Māori. I discovered that too long in opposition to colonising narratives meant that I had forgotten what I was fighting for, I only knew what I was fighting against. Journalism burned me out a little. Even with great support, Māori experience the industry differently. The feedback is brutal and sometimes violent. I’m proud of what we created with Ātea, it was groundbreaking for the industry at the time (which no other media outlet would admit but they all copied us eventually). I’m not sure I was built for a long career though. I lacked the grit and pace of a lot of my colleagues.
Charlotte: I’m not sure if I’d have any career in journalism without The Spinoff publishing me and then hiring me after I finished university (for that I have Leonie Hayden to thank!). When I was offered a job at Metro last year it was such a hard decision to leave The Spinoff. I consulted almost everyone I knew and had this long pros and cons list going because I hated the idea of leaving a place that I knew to be inspiring and supportive and exciting (but also at times quite challenging and exhausting) for the unknown. In the end, the lure of change and print media won out though. When I left it felt more like I was going on an OE, and I love the thought of returning one day.
Kerryanne: I left for work-life balance reasons as I needed to figure out how to work a job and still be able to do school drop-offs, pick-ups and the myriad other responsibilities that come with having a kid that likes to do extra-curricular activities, so I started freelancing which gave me that flexibility. But the work I did at The Spinoff and the things I learned there are still a huge influence on my career. I was there in the early days so there was so much test and learning going on – often with failure involved (failure is ok everyone!). That’s something I miss in my work now, the ability to just quickly try things and see what happens.
How did you dress in 2014? Do you still have something beloved in your wardrobe from 10 years ago?
Alex: Prior to The Spinoff I had been working for three years as a cinema projectionist, and was used to an endless funeral procession of black clothing. This was my first office job and I had no idea what to wear, so I basically just dressed like Duncan Greive at the time. Glasses, shirt collar popping over a wool jersey, jeans. My elevation on his look was adding extremely pointy Chelsea boots that basically looked like Winklepickers. So yes, imagine Duncan Greive in a short blonde wig, with Winklepickers on.
Madeleine: In 2014 I was in my final year of university and riding a motorcycle everywhere which meant I wore black track pants, Docs and a black leather jacket 90% of the time. I still have those Docs and still wear them but have gladly moved on from the rest of the outfit.
Amber: I dress the same now as I did then. I am a long-time uniform dresser and wear a slight variation on the same outfit everyday – black boots, black pants, black tshirt, a cotton sweater in either black, grey or navy. I own multiples of everything.
Niki: I always loved Twenty-seven Names, and still wear their dresses from back then, and from earlier too.
Leonie: Not an item of clothing, but I was definitely rocking micro-bangs that year. I remain convinced that they suit me but my boyfriend and best friend disagree.
Charlotte: Moccasins, bucket hats, Nike Air Force 1s, Lonely, Topshop, absurdly short skirts, blonde hair (yikes), Miss Crabb tops which I saved up for and bought in the sales, t-shirts from Fast and Loose and Vixen, one of those enormous Kate Sylvester chain necklaces with the lock, the uniform for my cafe job.
I had an Ingrid Starnes slip dress which I thrashed that year – I’ve been meaning to get it turned into a top because it’s so threadbare. I still wear exactly the same hoops that I wore religiously then and I remain obsessed with a pair of Opening Ceremony platforms I bought back then, even though there’s no chance I’d wear them now.
Kerryanne: A quick scroll of my iPhone will confirm that yes, my light purple silk Miss Crabb dress was loved then and now.
Lyric: I was 14, and Tumblr was my only source of culture and inspiration in an otherwise lifeless world (the Hutt Valley). Some days I wanted to be like Lorde, and other days I wanted to live out my Alexa Chung fantasy. Think all black and chunky shoes on a Friday, and a blouse (why does a child need to wear this outside of school?) and denim shorts on a Sunday. No photos (that I know of) still exist from that time period, nor do the clothes. I’ll always have the memories though.
The Spinoff writers are beloved by its audience. Who do you enjoy reading/watching?
Alex: There are two newsletters I will open without fail. The first is Jess Defino’s The Review of Beauty, which surgically dissects the beauty industry week-to-week. The second is Hunter Harris’ Hung Up, just the funniest, smartest and stupidest pop culture musings you’ll ever read anywhere. Apart from The Spinoff, of course.
Madeleine: Thanks to my job, I read a whole lot of The Spinoff before it’s published and genuinely enjoy all of our staff writers’ work, even in first draft form. Outside of The Spinoff, I enjoy Henry Cooke’s (sporadic) politics newsletter, Dana Johannsen’s sports writing for RNZ, and everything Talia Marshall writes.
Amber: I subscribe to too many newsletters and feel overwhelmed when they hit my inbox at the same time. But I always read The Rebooting, Brian Morrissey’s media newsletter.
Lyric has only been at The Spinoff for a couple months but it's like she’s always been here. I love everything she writes. On the weekend, I enjoy reading regular formats like My Life in TV, The Grub Street Diet and The Guardian’s Sunday with... There is something about the consistency, I find incredibly soothing.
Niki: I was a massive fan of The Real Pod and I’m super sad that it’s gone.
Leonie: Hunter Harris is a culture writer whose Substack, Hung Up, I love and subscribe to. She’s a culture critic who has written some seriously weighty profiles, but her newsletter is gossipy, shady and funny as fuck.
Charlotte: I don’t read for fun enough, but when I do, it’s usually something from The Spinoff, The Baffler, Ensemble, The Boil Up, Popbitch or The New Yorker. I consume a lot of food writing too, most of which is written by Helen Rosner, Soleil Ho, Jaya Saxena, Kim Knight, Jonathan Nunn and Rebecca May Johnson. I like old Nigella Lawson and Anthony Bourdain content too – and often read or watch with a pen in hand to take notes.
Oh, and while I try to avoid TikTok and YouTube (I really don’t need any more social media in my life), I really like Mina Le and I follow the food content made by Paris Nuku and Raukura Huata religiously.
Kerryanne: I’m a big Substack subscriber so I get a bunch of local and international newsletters (Hi Emily Writes, Sam Brooks, Chris Schulz!).
I’m kind of doing a detox from ‘news’ right now but I do love The Cut and subscribe to New York Magazine which I think hits an amazing mix of design, big issue features and hyper-local NY stories. Also, of course, I love Metro magazine – so clever and beautiful and it’s such a treat to receive in my mailbox.
I have lots of podcasts backed up too – Normal Gossip is great, Off Menu is very silly, funny and good to exercise too as it takes your mind off the exercise. I also really enjoy Petra Bagust’s Grey Areas, as the peri-menopause and menopause discussions are very relevant to me and a lot of my friends right now. And Gone by Lunchtime of course, BIG FAN.
Lyric: At any given time I am either listening to one of five podcasts (The Read, The Friend Zone, Binchtopia, The Detail and one of the millions of The Spinoff’s shows) or religiously checking every single news outlet I can think of. Consuming media 24/7 is no way to live and you should go outside and touch some grass. Or read Joan Didion.
