SUSTAINABLE PUBLISHING

This is your opportunity to influence the future course of New Zealand Geographic.

Enough about us. Let's talk about you. We want to get to know our readers better—what spins your wheels or grinds your gears.

We are interested in both positive and negative feedback. Whether you have been subscribing for 30 years or three months. Whether you read print or digital or both. Every response counts.

Here’s how it works. We will ask some questions about you first. This enables us to better analyse the results by reader group, for instance understanding what young readers most want, or loyal subscribers, or those who only read our stories online.

Then we will ask about which stories you would like to see more of, and those you’re not interested in. We will ask you about the role you think New Zealand Geographic should play in the public conversation, if we should tackle more issues-based stories, or stick to sealions and tree ferns. (Or do both.)

Finally, we will ask about whether NZGeo feels like value for money, how much it should cost, whether you would consider subscribing (if you don’t already) and whether there could or should be other ways to support our journalism.

Every survey response will be analysed by the publisher and editorial team, usually in aggregate with the responses from other readers. For this reason, many of the questions will be multi-choice, but we will also give you the opportunity to say your piece in your own words, if you wish... though keep these short. Your responses will all be read and considered. There are no dumb ideas.

The last thing to add is that your response is between you and us. While we will share the aggregated results (like, 38% of readers want more stories about tree ferns) we will not share individual responses in a way where you can be identified. Neither will we pass data on to third parties or do anything creepy. Promise.

So first, thank you for being a NZGeo reader. And thank you, in advance, for taking the time to share your ideas with us.

You can start the survey here.

THE HARD SELL

In the meantime...

We are only a thousand subscriptions away from our goal of 10,000—a number that will make our journalism sustainable in the immediate term. Here are some worthy recipients you may not have thought of:

1. Your tea room at work, to improve conversation
2. The aunt who visits once a year with a bag of grapefruit
3. The godchild you keep forgetting about
4. Your local school library
5. The climate denier across the road
6. Grandpa, even though grandma is more likely to read it

If you have any questions about this survey, drop me a line on james@nzgeographic.co.nz. If you have a question about subscriptions, get in touch with our subscriptions manager Davina on 0800 782 436 or subs@nzgeographic.co.nz.

PHILANTHROPY

What if I’d prefer to donate?

We have received numerous requests from readers who would like to make a donation, independent of a subscription. There are a number of considerations around this.

First, New Zealand Geographic is a private company, not a charitable trust. As such there is no tax deduction for the donation. However, some donors want to make a donation to support our journalism. So we have set up some rules for how these donations are treated:

1. Donations will all be paid into a clearing account so they are separated from other business functions and transactions.
2. Donations are not subject to GST as they don’t relate to provision of a good or service.
3. We will seek the views of donors on what the funds should be used for. Our first instinct is that the funds should be tagged to production on stories that are in the public interest, and in particular to extending coverage over and above what we would do in the ordinary course of business. That is, additional expenses to cover hard-to-reach locations, extra time on the ground where there will be a benefit to the story, or covering stories that would ordinarily be too expensive.
4. We will report back to donors at the end of each year on how their funds were used. In order to report back, we will require your name and an email address.

If these conditions seem appropriate we would welcome your contribution and we can do a lot of good work with it.

The account we have set up for donations is ASB 12 3072 0812837 02 — note the different suffix from our normal current account. If you donate into this account, please send an email to subs@nzgeographic.co.nz so we have your details on record for reporting purposes.

Whether or not you choose to donate, thank you for considering this, and for your ongoing support.