Ahiahi mārie, welcome to The Spinoff Daily. Today on The Spinoff: The rise and fall of Shane Reti, beautiful but scary microplastics and one simple trick to conquer your reading goals this year.
“The sign launched with a photo of mayor Andy Foster holding a yellow umbrella à la Mary Poppins, and a press release from WellingtonNZ full of marketing buzzwords about how it was “engineered to invoke curiosity and engagement”. Nearly universally, Wellington’s chattering class dismissed the idea with deep, bitter cynicism. I was among them. At the time, I was writing for Stuff and The Dominion Post and almost concussed myself from rolling my eyes so hard. My opinion was shared by most of the newsroom. Amid all of Wellington’s other serious issues, it felt insulting that WellingtonNZ thought the solution was a silly sign that didn’t even spell the city’s name correctly. Three years on, it’s safe to say that I was completely wrong. The Well_ngton sign has been a runaway success. It’s become the default photo for any Instagram post about a visit to Wellington, for tourists and major international artists alike. To take the photo at the top of this story, I had to wait in line behind four other people who wanted the same shot. That $130,000 one-time cost is looking like a bargain now. That local news media was overwhelmingly wrong deserves some reckoning. The problem, in my view, all boils down to an industry-wide problem with cynicism, which filters out throughout the public.”
The rise and fall of Shane Reti Great, there are microplastics in our compost now too (but look at them!) The Fold: On Meta going Maga, TikTok’s perilous future and NZ media in 2025
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You can't beat Well_ngton on a good day
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