I was in Woollies on Saturday to do a bit of grocery shopping. Nothing too unusual there, I am sure a lot of people around the country were doing the same thing.  Creative Content's David Hague What was slightly unusual though was that I was paying in cash having sold some stuff on Facebook Marketplace the day before. All the manned (personned?) checkouts were full, so I went to the self-checkout area to find one that took cash, scanned my meagre number of goodies and then got a $50 note out of my wallet.  Within a split second, a bright young thing was next to me asking if I needed help using the cash  system on the checkout as “it could be complicated for older people”. My brain instantly retorted, “Listen you, I was programming Lotus 1-2-3 macros when your Dad wasn’t yet in long trousers, using 4GL systems to write accounting packages when you were only a twinkle in your parent’s eyes and doing video editing on computers when yo

Like any other publication, The Daily Aus wants exclusives pitched to them, but it comes with a catch, says News Editor Adella Beaini. "I've had many instances, before coming to TDA, where I'd think, 'Oh, this is a really good story,' mention it to an editor, and they'd say, 'I think everyone got sent that same thing.' That's the worst feeling you can get," she said on Influencing Insider last week. “Please don't mass send it as if you intend it to be, for example, for TDA, and then I come around and say to you an hour later, ‘I would love that’, but you've gone and sent it to a billion people, we’re not going to rush to do that”.  She's sympathetic to the pressure behind it. "I understand the PRs who've done it...they've got clients, they've got to send it to X amount of people. But you'd rather send it to one good person and get a yes than send it to a million and get a

Starmer resigns, plunging Britain into fresh political uncertainty UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer has quit less than two years after a landslide win, triggering a leadership contest and raising the prospect of months of instability that could ripple into markets and allied politics. Australian papers frame it as a dramatic collapse of authority, with some focusing on internal Labor pressure and a likely successor. Covered by: Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, Australian Financial Review, The Australian, Daily Telegraph, Courier Mail, Herald Sun, The Advertiser. Bird flu alarm: WA cases spark national biosecurity scramble Two H5 detections in Western Australia have prompted stepped-up biosecurity measures and warnings about threats to wildlife and the poultry industry, as authorities assess whether the virus can be contained. Other coverage widens the lens to the potential impact on native species, underscoring the stakes if the outbreak spreads beyond isolated cases. Covered by: The W

Lwindi Ellis signs off from Raise Communications after six-and-a-half years Lwindi Ellis is stepping back from Raise Communications, the Auckland consultancy she founded in 2019, to work with purpose-led organisations across health, sustainability and community.  In a LinkedIn post, Ellis said the decision marked the close of a “special time” building a business that helped charities, social enterprises and values-led brands tell their stories and broaden their impact. Ellis launched Raise after a long career in PR and communications spanning agency and in-house roles in New Zealand and the UK.  Her previous stints include head of PR for New Zealand at Adhesive PR, head of PR and communications at Les Mills International, PR group account director at Eleven PR, PR director at FCB New Zealand and an account director at Goode PR.  Ellis said she would share details of her next move soon Mikayla Han steps up at CampaignXpress CampaignXpress has promot

Hyderabad-based journalist Thulasi Chandu has once again condemned the trolling of women journalists on social media, and the word that matters is again. This is not something she stumbled into once. A few months ago she joined a group of women journalists who met Hyderabad City Police Commissioner V.C. Sajjanar to flag the harassment they face online. Their complaint described something deliberate. The abuse, they said, appeared organised and built to intimidate and disrupt their work, with some users circulating their residential details. They asked for a proper investigation under the IPC and IT Act and for stronger protection mechanisms for women in the profession. What happened in Hyderabad is not a Hyderabad problem. Reji R. Nair, senior journalist and state committee member of the Kerala Union of Working Journalists, says it is the texture of the job for women across India, and that the abuse rarely engages with the journalism at all. "When it comes to women journalists,

Monday, 22 June 2026 #1  ·  Nation  ·  Data story Pvt hosps get 60% of patients but have little research output By Pushpa Narayan   ·   The Times of India  ·  Page Unknown An analysis of medical research output reveals that private hospitals in India treat 60% of patients but contribute fewer than 10 research papers annually per institution, compared to large corporate hospitals. The story draws on publication data from 18 medical colleges and highlights the stark disparity between patient load and academic output in private versus public medical institutions. The story uses original quantitative analysis — citing publication counts across categories of medical institutions — to expose a structural gap in India's healthcare-research ecosystem that is rarely examined. The use of a comparative data framework gives it genuine investigative weight. #2  ·  Times City  ·&n

Breaking down complex stories into accessible, digestible news is the "bread and butter" for The Daily Aus, says News Editor Adella Beaini. “It's not to make people feel dumb. It's so people don't feel like they're getting left out and, honestly, it's something I probably never thought of in my eight years in a metro newsroom,” she shared on Influencing Insider last Thursday.  “You have to put yourself in the shoes of people that are not necessarily consuming that much news. They might on their morning commute, but not living and breathing [it] for every hour of every day.”  Beaini said social media was central to The Daily Aus' explainer journalism. “It’s meeting people where they are at, it's very shareable content, it's digestible. There's a lot of thought put into the visuals. We all know it's so hard to get people’s attention, whether it’s a website, an app or social media.”  Beaini joined The Daily Aus in March after starting her journalism career at N