The outgoing director of grassroots community campaigning organisation ActionStation joins Duncan Greive to talk about a busy few years in the job.ActionStation was formed in 2014, but it feels like they’ve been around much longer than that. The independent, crowdfunded community organisation has led a number of highly visible and successful campaigns across a wide range of issues during the last six years, thanks in no small part to the energy and forward thinking of its outgoing director Laura O’Connell Rapira.In her time the group has carried the conversation on everything from mental health to making Matariki a public holiday in a way that feels distinctly modern, online and media-savvy. To talk about what’s worked, what hasn’t, the highlights of the role and what’s next, Laura O’Connell Rapira joined host Duncan Greive on this week’s episode of The Fold.The Fold is proudly supported by Vodafone. With innovation made simple and world-class network technology, Vodafone will help maximise the potential of you and your business. Find out more at vodafone.co.nz Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is episode one of Coming Home, a new five-part podcast series from The Spinoff podcast network, in partnership with Kiwibank. We're sharing it with you here because we think if you like The Fold you might find this interesting too. Have a listen and subscribe on your platform of choice to hear the rest of the series. New episodes arriving weekly.Coming Home delves into the phenomenon of high achieving New Zealanders returning to Aotearoa in the era of Covid-19. Join hosts Duncan Greive and Jane Yee as they seek to find out who these returnees are, why they left New Zealand in the first place, the reasons for their homecoming and what their arrival means for all of us. Featuring Peter Gordon, Julia Arnott-Neenee, Paul Spoonley, Jarrod Kerr, Rachel Morris, Joel Kefali, Polly Fryer and Mahoney Turnbull. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

NZ Rugby is in a fascinating situation at the moment, with some big calls to be made over the coming years. The man in charge of making them joins Duncan Greive on this week’s episode of The Fold.Mark Robinson probably has one of the most complex jobs in the country. As CEO of NZ Rugby he’s effectively the boss of everything from the All Blacks and Black Ferns to the clubs, the head of an organisation that has many, many different stakeholders.He only came into the job about nine months ago, which meant he was just getting his feet under the desk when Covid hit and threw the whole rugby season a massive dummy. The pandemic didn’t just disrupt the match schedule – it seemed to bring a lot of the sport’s underlying issues to the surface as well.This obviously makes the CEO’s a much harder one than it would have been even a few years ago. NZ Rugby is in a fascinating situation, and decisions made under Mark Robinson’s tenure could make or break the sport’s future in New Zealand.To discuss this situation, as well as talking about Match Fit and what he admires about the NBA’s marketing model, he joined Duncan Greive for this week’s episode of The Fold. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This week on The Fold, journalist Bernard Hickey joins host Duncan Greive for a wide-ranging chat about the challenges faced by New Zealand media and why he’s launched a new subscription-only daily email.Working at the intersection of politics and economics, Bernard Hickey is one of the most interesting and unique journalists in New Zealand today. As you’ll hear in this episode, he possesses a rare ability to make even the most mysterious or boring-sounding topics within these areas feel urgent, exciting and accessible.His latest venture in a long career (he’s one of the founders of Interest.co.nz, has held senior roles in the Fairfax/Stuff Business team and was one of the founders of Newsroom, and that’s just the tip of the iceberg) is The Kākā, a daily email which allows him to respond to unfolding stories in close to real time. To talk about why, as well as get stuck into government policy toward the media and the New Zealand media market, the wage subsidy, Stuff’s recent acquisition and more, he joined Duncan Greive in the studio for a no-holds-barred, boots’n’all episode of The Fold. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

From winning two world cups with the Black Ferns to heading up TVNZ’s sports and events department, Melodie Robinson’s career has been one full of remarkable firsts. She joins host Duncan Greive to talk about it on this week’s episode of The Fold.When the Ministry of Education decided to start a children’s educational channel during the first lockdown earlier this year, the job fell to the TVNZ department that had just found itself with not a lot of work on – sports and events. General manager Melodie Robinson and her team threw together the prop, got the contract and ended up setting up the entire channel in about 10 days.That’s just one remarkable story in a career full of them. Robinson started out in journalism as a press gallery reporter for Mana News, before moving into sports production at XtraMSN. She broke barriers as a rugby commentator presenter during a long career at Sky Sports, before moving into a new role at TVNZ.It’d be fair to say Robinson has seen some things and faced some challenges in her time at these institutions – and has some of the best stories in the business to show for it. She’s been a dream guest for The Fold since the podcast began, and we’re delighted to finally get her on for a chat this week. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Spinoff’s new(ish) political editor Justin Giovannetti joins Duncan Greive to share his impressions from a hectic first six months on the job – and in New Zealand.When Justin Giovannetti interviewed for the job of political editor at The Spinoff, from Canada, the world was quite a different place. In the time it took for him to work out his notice with national newspaper The Globe and Mail, a global pandemic shut borders, grounded flights and threw everyone’s plans for the year into disarray.How Justin made it to New Zealand at all is a story for another podcast. This week on The Fold he joins Duncan Greive to talk about the baptism under fire that has been reporting on New Zealand politics for the first time in the middle of an election year, in the middle of a pandemic.New Zealand’s press gallery and political reporting style is pretty different to Canada’s – so what have been the weirdest things he’s had to get his head around, and what are his main impressions, as a newcomer, of this punishingly long election campaign? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Former NZ Women’s Weekly editor Sido Kitchin joins The Fold’s Duncan Greive to talk about starting School Road Publishing and launching a whole new stable of magazines following the collapse of Bauer Media.Sido Kitchin loves telling New Zealand women’s stories. An important figure in the magazine industry, she edited the New Zealand Women’s Weekly until earlier this year, when the collapse of Bauer Media brought it and a lot of other popular titles to an abrupt end.The six months since have been a period of regeneration for the magazine industry, with a number of new independent publishers, titles and websites blooming. Perhaps no one has moved as hard and fast as Sido Kitchin, who has set up School Road Publishing and established not just one but four new titles – Woman, Haven, Thrive and Scout.She joined The Fold host Duncan Greive in the studio this week for a chat about this tumultuous year, what it was like starting with a blank canvas and why the first issue of Woman is more true to her vision than any magazine she’s ever edited before – plus what it was like being a TV publicist in the golden era of big budget broadcast television. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Fold host Duncan Greive speaks to NZ On Air’s new chief executive Cameron Harland about his first six months in the job and the findings of the recent Where Are the Audiences? report.Cameron Harland started his new job as the chief executive of NZ On Air in March, the week before the country went into level four lockdown. Duncan has wanted to get him on The Fold to pick his brain about the ins and outs of NZ On Air’s unique funding model ever since.In a follow-up to the previous episode of The Fold, which looked at the highlights of NZ On Air’s recent Where Are the Audiences? survey, Cameron Harland joined The Fold via Skype from Wellington this week to talk through the findings of the survey, how NZ On Air is adapting to serve increasingly fragmented audiences, and the challenges of operating through Covid-19. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Christmas has arrived early for The Fold host Duncan Greive – this week NZ On Air released Where are the Audiences?, a biannual survey of audience behaviour in New Zealand media.The report is unique in the way it attempts to measure the behaviour of such a diverse set of audiences across all media consumption. This year’s edition shows New Zealand at a crossroads, with digital media overtaking traditional media in largest daily audiences for the first time.It goes without saying that Duncan has already read the whole report from cover to cover. In this monopod edition of The Fold he picks out the most interesting data points, and discusses the seismic change it represent for the New Zealand media landscape.– Sign up to The Spinoff's newsletter Rec Room for weekly recommendations along with all our latest videos and podcasts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

One of New Zealand’s most voracious consumers of local news media joins Duncan Greive to reveal the secrets behind his popular daily newsletter.Most days Alex Braae starts work at approximately the same time as a dairy farmer. But instead of hopping on a quad bike to go and milk a shed full of cows, he sits down at his computer to read a figurative shed full of news. The end product is just as important to a lot of people’s morning routines as a cold bottle of blue top milk – it’s The Spinoff’s daily newsletter The Bulletin.Since it started in 2018, The Bulletin has developed a loyal following among its more than 25,000 subscribers by collecting and distilling all the most important stories from across the New Zealand news landscape into a single email that hits inboxes at 7am every morning. But exactly how Alex does it remains a mystery to even his closest colleagues.He joins The Fold host (and his boss) Duncan Greive on this month’s edition of The Fold to explain the process behind the curation and creation of The Bulletin, discuss the state of New Zealand journalism (as someone who consumes more of it than most) and delve into the obsession with local democracy and minor parties which led him to embark on a Jucy campervan tour of the regions before Lockdown 2.0 hit. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices