On Monday night members had the opportunity to be entertained by Phil as he recounted a very varied and interesting career in the media.
Post Lynfield College and after a brief foray into banking Phill travelled to the UK where a lucky break meant he missed the O.E. pub work and had time at ITV, Channel 4 and the BBC.
Hitting 30, he decided it was NZ where he wanted to be and got into print journalism. Time at the Truth when it had a circulation of 100,000 followed by a two year stint in an english language newspaper in Chile and varying stints at the Eastern Courier and the Pakuranga Times.
Now with the Eastern Times Phil was able to show very clearly how the newspaper business has fundamentally changed. Local papers are now much less common, and newspapers rely much less heavily on printed copies.
The Eastern Times has a print run or 15,000 twice a month but continues to publish local news as it occurred digitally. The recent MacDonalds fire had 20,000 views with in hours and for some stories the total views will top 200,000.
