Introducing a new way to read The Spinoff every weekend.

After nearly 10 years of being an online magazine, we’re finally embracing the weekend liftout. Despite our best efforts to convince you otherwise, writers and editors at The Spinoff don’t work weekends. It is through the sheer power of technology (scheduling stories, not writing them) that articles continue to appear on the site Saturdays and Sundays. But no more! Starting this very morning, we’ll be publishing our full weekend slate all at once on Saturday morning for you to browse – consider it a true weekend magazine. 

Like any weekend magazine, we have our staples that you can expect to see every week. My Life in TV is an increasingly popular series talking to high-profile New Zealanders about their favourite moments on and in front of the small screen. Our Sunday Essay series is going strong, with a beautiful personal essay published every week. We have profiles and pop culture reviews, and sometimes just the wholesome yarn you need at the end of a long week. We’ll be offering the same amount of stories and goodness as always, just available all at once rather than drip fed across 48 hours so you know exactly what you’re getting and can return later to the articles that tickle your fancy.

So what are these changes?

• From this morning, everything we used to publish over two weekend days will be published all at once and live from 5am on Saturdays. Read it all at your leisure. 
• There’ll be a new introduction to our weekend reading from me each Saturday, including a list of the stories you’ve spent the most time with each week and our favourite reader feedback of the week – an editorial… of sorts. 
• We have a new weekly podcast called Behind the Story where I talk to a Spinoff writer or contributor about a big story of theirs published during the week.
• We are relaunching our weekend newsletter to guide you through the week and weekend on The Spinoff, edited by yours truly.

Why are we changing our weekend publishing rhythm?

The Spinoff has always described itself as an online magazine. We moved into necessary news coverage during the pandemic, and remain committed to covering current affairs in the way we do, but at our core, we’re a magazine. 

At some point, the idea of staggering our weekend publishing the way we stagger it on weekdays just made no sense. When we thought about how people might prefer to read The Spinoff on Saturdays and Sundays it seemed obvious that might be different to how they read it during the week and have decided to publish all our weekend reads from 5am on Saturday.

This is a bit of an experiment. If it works for us and works for you, we’ll look to make a few more changes to build on this. 

What is this podcast, Behind the Story?

We’re launching this new podcast because we’re very aware that trust is important and the way media work can sometimes be a bit opaque. The podcast is a way to demystify some of the decisions we make about what we cover, how we frame them, why we use some of the headlines we do, and what and why some things end up on the cutting room floor. It’s also a way for you to meet more of our writers. 

Each week I’ll talk to someone at The Spinoff about something they’ve written and sometimes, the week that’s been. This week I chat with the outgoing editor of the Bulletin, Anna Rawhiti-Connell about trust, ending her time as editor and her opinion piece on dog shit. 

What’s this newsletter? Don’t you already have a weekend one?

To guide you way through the week and the weekend on The Spinoff, we’ve relaunched our weekend newsletter, The Weekend. It’s now called the same, but with me attached. It’s also a way for me to have a weekly conversation with you because I love to yap.

Each week I will send you a wrap of the weekend stories, the stories readers have spent the most time reading throughout the week, my own recommendations, the new podcast and share some reader feedback. Sign up below.

So what have readers spent the most time reading this week?

• Hera Lindsay Bird with a handy primer for arts spokespeople who know nothing about New Zealand art (runner up for the Most Embarrassing Moment award).
• Joel MacManus works out of the press gallery for The Spinoff and has exemplified our approach with this column. He watched Faʻanānā Efeso Collins’ formal commemoration and highlighted something that everyone else overlooked.
• The comments on Asia Martusia King’s story about attempting to cook with dog food instead of meat sum this up better than I ever could.
• Bronwen Newton generously shares her experience of trying (and failing) to get a co-housing project up and running and why she thinks it’s still a good idea
• Duncan Greive’s exclusive on how a High Court showdown between two Māori culture giants flared and faded in a day
  

Comments of the week

On Joel MacManus’s story about Faʻanānā Efeso Collins’ commemoration

On eating dog food and poss(y)um