Summer reissue: Sinead Boucher on buying Stuff for $1

The Fold is taking a break over the summer. We'll be back with new episodes soon, but until then we're republishing some of our favourite interviews of 2020. This week: Duncan talks with Stuff CEO Sinead Boucher after she bought the company for $1 back in May.

First published June 24, 2020.

The chaotic couple of weeks which finally saw the end of the Stuff-NZME saga were riveting and strange, replete with stock exchange announcements, legal challenges and finally the acquisition of New Zealand’s most-viewed news platform by its CEO for just $1.

Six months after she appeared on the very first episode of The Spinoff’s media podcast, The Fold, I had Stuff CEO – and now Stuff’s sole owner – Sinead Boucher back to the show. She recounts those extraordinary few weeks, from the collapse of Bauer NZ, to just how brutalised ad revenues got in lockdown, the bailout package and the strange forces impacting journalism during level four.

Sinead casually reveals what happened behind the scenes during those hectic times, and plots out the future for Stuff – New Zealand’s biggest employer of journalists, and the closest thing to a truly national news network that exists in this country. For those in and around the media, who watched the maneuvering of our two print media giants with awe and popcorn, it’s a pretty fascinating hour. 

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