Duncan Greive

Duncan Greive is a New Zealand journalist and media entrepreneur and the founder of The Spinoff, the Auckland-based independent outlet that grew from a small blog into one of the country’s most influential modern media companies.

Greive’s route into media was anything but conventional. Born in Auckland in 1979 and raised partly in South London before his family returned home, he left university early to support a young family and worked as a postie while finishing a history degree part-time. He talked his way into music criticism at the magazine Real Groove and when he was told he couldn’t be promoted without a journalism qualification, he went and got one, becoming the magazine’s editor soon after, then freelancing through the late 2000s for the likes of Metro and the Sunday Star-Times.

The Spinoff began in 2014, almost by accident, as a blog about television sponsored by the streaming service Lightbox, a year before Netflix arrived in New Zealand. From those origins it widened relentlessly: politics, business, culture, te ao Māori and social issues, delivered across articles, newsletters, podcasts and video. Greive grew the team from two people to around thirty, without ever taking outside investment, funding the business instead through sponsorship, membership and an in-house commercial creative studio.

Along the way The Spinoff helped break open a New Zealand media landscape long dominated by two large players, giving a modern, playful, often irreverent alternative to the established mastheads and launching the careers of a generation of journalists in the process. Greive has been recognised as Creative Entrepreneur of the Year, and he continues to write about the media as an industry while hosting The Fold, his long-running podcast on the New Zealand media business.

He has since handed the chief executive role to Amber Easby and turned his attention to new ventures, including Lume, a digital music app, while remaining The Spinoff’s founder and a leading voice on the business of media.

Greive’s profile is noteworthy because The Spinoff is one of the clearest examples of a sustainable, independent New Zealand media company built from scratch in the digital era. He showed that a small, self-funded team could build genuine influence and a lasting business outside the traditional newsroom model, a story explored further in New Zealand media founders to watch, alongside fellow media founder Bernard Hickey.

Sources: The Spinoff · Wikipedia · Mediaweek