Talk:The Spinoff

Staff and contributors

Nauseous Man asks the question: Some of these people aren't notable enough even for a redlink, should we remove them? These lists should only include notable people. WP:RED YES applies but I would say that without a reference, I wouldn't even include a red link. After all, a reader would need to understand why a person is listed here and if there isn't a blue link (where you can presumably establish what the person's relationship is to The Spinoff), there should be a reference that explains the relevance. So yes, this needs serious pruning. Schwede66 20:47, 26 July 2022 (UTC)

I'm glad I'm not the only one thought this. There's a couple, like Alex Casey, who I'm surprised don't have a wiki, but some of the others can probably be pruned. I wonder if it's worth copy and pasting the list here for record keeping (so that people can come back and include them if they want) and then give it a prune? Nauseous Man (talk) 21:55, 26 July 2022 (UTC)

As there were no objections, I'm copying over the entire list here, and will prune non-notables from the list. I'll get round to providing references to the blue links too. Nauseous Man (talk) 08:51, 28 July 2022 (UTC)

• Duncan Greive
• Toby Manhire
• Catherine McGregor
• Alice Neville
• Toby Morris
• Catherine Woulfe
• Alex Braae
• Leonie Hayden
• Alice Webb-Liddall
• Jihee Junn
• Sam Brooks
• Josie Adams
• Emily Writes
• Justin Giovannetti
• Justin Latif
• Michael Andrew
• Stewart Sowman-Lund
• Hayden Donnell
• Dr Siouxsie Wiles
• Bernard Hickey
• Alex Casey

• Madeleine Chapman
• Steve Braunias
• Finlay Macdonald
• Charlotte Grimshaw
• Josh Drummond
• Ashleigh Young
• Anjum Rahman
• Michelle Langstone
• Linda Burgess
• Ranginui Walker
• Kim Workman
• Debbie Ngarewa-Packer
• Metiria Turei
• Danyl Mclauchlan
• Briar Grace-Smith
• Chris Tse
• Dr Shaun Hendy
• Mark Amery
• Simon Pound
• Megan Dunn
• Samuel Te Kani

Political bent

While I agree that we probably don’t need the first thing presented to readers to be the outlet’s politics (per this diff) I do think there is likely enough commentary out there to merit the inclusion of The Spinoff’s left-wing point of view. Especially with the 2023 Curia poll (who record the Spinoff with a net score of 14% left, and with the most ‘strongly left’ responses: 16%), but backed up by commenters across the board: That crucial early piece from Stuff (“Right now, every left-leaning, media-savvy, university-educated hipster you know (and probably their baby-boomer parents) are reading The Spinoff.” 2016), Mike Hosking (“Spinoff TV comes out of the Spinoff website, which is a venture run by young angstys with a fairly obvious left-leaning bend.” 2018), and more recently Bryce Edwards, with the softer implication, including Spinoff-published commentary in a piece titled “The Left's postmortem on Labour's defeat” (2023). There’s also the poll by Kiwiblog/David Farrar, which shows Spinoff 78 points to the left on a scale from 100 left to 100 right (2020; Farrar is on the right himself, but I am inclined to believe his results at least part of the way to that 78 score). Ultimately though, I just don’t think it would be terribly controversial to acknowledge a political tilt here, as, unlike something more thorny like talking about NZ First’s politics, I doubt even most people associated with the Spinoff would disagree.

Supplemental addendum: Some other sources include Media Bias Fact Check, who I don’t know, but seem reasonable (“In general, The Spinoff holds left-leaning editorial biases and reports news accurately” 2023), Winston himself (“Peters says the Spinoff are leftist shills.” 2024) and a random Redditor who came up on the first page of Google (“Spinoff is known to be strongly left wing. Not so much because of ideology, that's just the market they and their sponsors are aiming for.” 2023). — HTGS (talk) 21:58, 16 June 2024 (UTC)