Peter Williams

Welcome to the Herald's new Media Insider column, compiled by Shayne Currie, who this week started a new role as NZME Editor-at-Large, after eight years as ...

I’m also back on the floor of the newsroom – The Spinoff’s Duncan Greive was telling me he had done the same with his own recent change and was loving it. It’s a little daunting - but invigorating - to be back on the frontline and writing again. He and fellow broadcaster (and wife) Kate Hawkesby will be hosting their respective Newstalk ZB shows live from London in the week prior to the coronation. Some of the best ideas for columns are borrowed. Broadcaster Rachel Smalley certainly didn’t hold back in taking a swipe at one of the public relations professionals who Guyon Espiner wrote about last week in an RNZ investigative series. It will be interesting to see any impact on those Stuff audiences if paywalls are implemented for The Press and DomPost URLs. That to me just went against the grain of what I thought as an individual because I’m a believer in freedom of association, freedom of speech, of democracy. “I’d like to acknowledge his significant contribution to Magic Mornings over the past three years – there have been plenty of engaging and lively discussions. Meanwhile, the Herald has maintained a healthy overall digital audience – just under two million people in February, according to Nielsen. “I picked up something early on, and I don’t know what set off the spark in my brain, about the concept of vaccination mandates. After Grunwell called him, Williams posed for photos for the newspaper at a bus stop, on the basis he’d be using public transport for the next little while. A regular fixture on television screens from the late 1970s to 2018, he consistently featured as one of New Zealand broadcasting’s most engaging personalities.