New Zealand Media Founders to Watch
Meet the New Zealand media founders building new platforms across social, newsletters, podcasts, and creator-led brands, from SYSCA to The Spinoff.
New Zealand’s next major media companies may not look much like its last ones. Increasingly, they look like newsletters, podcasts, creator brands, industry publications, social-first platforms and community-led editorial projects, built by founders who go directly to an audience rather than through an institution.
Traditional media is no longer the only path to influence. Trust is moving towards specific voices, communities and specialised platforms and a number of New Zealand founders are building exactly that. Here are some worth watching.
What we looked for
This is not a list of the biggest outlets. It is a list of founders who have built a distinct audience, a clear editorial point of view, a genuine publishing platform or media product, real commercial or cultural relevance and the potential for long-term influence.
Social-first media: the founders of Shit You Should Care About
The clearest current example is Shit You Should Care About, founded in 2018 by Lucy Blakiston, Ruby Edwards and Olivia Mercer.
What started as a student blog in Wellington grew into a global youth media brand spanning Instagram, a daily newsletter, podcasts and a book, built on the insight that younger audiences wanted news that felt human rather than distant. The trio turned tone and trust into a media product and the company has since grown into a genuine New Zealand media export under Blakiston’s leadership. The fuller story of how that audience was built sits in How SYSCA built a global youth media brand from New Zealand.
The newsletter founder: Bernard Hickey, The Kākā
If SYSCA shows how social-first media can scale, Bernard Hickey shows how a single expert voice can build a self-sustaining business straight to the inbox. A veteran financial journalist who had already co-founded Interest.co.nz and Newsroom, Hickey launched The Kākā on Substack in 2020, a daily newsletter and podcast covering Aotearoa’s political economy through the lens of housing, climate and poverty.
It is a model built on niche authority rather than mass reach: deep, specialised coverage that readers value enough to pay for, supporting several full-time jobs without depending on advertising or platform algorithms. The Kākā is a clear example of the newsletter as a durable media company in its own right.
The podcast founders: Steve Holloway and Seamus Marten, Between Two Beers
In 2019, two best mates from Hamilton, former sports journalist Steve Holloway and football administrator Seamus Marten, bought a microphone and started recording long-form interviews in a garage. Between Two Beers has since become New Zealand’s most popular long-form interview podcast, with more than five million downloads and an audience well into six figures each month.
In 2024 the pair left their day jobs to go all in and in 2025 they took the show fully independent through a global partnership with Acast, building spin-off businesses around it. Their rise captures what podcasting does best: long-form trust, personality-led media and an audience loyal enough to follow the hosts wherever they go.
The creator-led founder: David Farrier, Webworm
David Farrier built a national profile as a documentary maker, Tickled, Netflix’s Dark Tourist, Mister Organ, before turning that audience into a media business of his own. His investigative newsletter Webworm, published on Substack, delivers original reporting on the strange and the serious directly to subscribers and he hosts the podcast Flightless Bird alongside it.
Farrier is a textbook case of the creator-led media founder: a recognisable personal brand becoming a publishing platform, with the independence to pursue stories and the legal fights that sometimes follow them, on his own terms.
The independent publisher: Duncan Greive, The Spinoff
Duncan Greive launched The Spinoff in 2014 as a small blog about television, sponsored by a streaming service. A decade on, it has grown into one of New Zealand’s most influential independent media organisations, covering politics, business, culture and te ao Māori across articles, newsletters, podcasts and video, funded through sponsorship, membership and a commercial creative studio rather than outside investment.
Greive, who also hosts the media-industry podcast The Fold, represents the independent editorial founder at scale: a sustainable, multi-platform newsroom built outside the traditional duopoly and proof that a New Zealand publisher can build lasting relevance on its own terms.
Why this matters
Media is being rebuilt around trust and specificity. Smaller teams can now reach large audiences and a New Zealand base is no longer a barrier to global relevance. The next significant New Zealand media brand may well start as a newsletter, a social page, a podcast or a community, not a newspaper.
SYSCA is one example of that change. New Zealand’s media founders are no longer only reporting stories; they are building new ways for people to find, understand and care about them.
Sources: Kea NZ · The Spinoff · BusinessDesk
