In an ever-changing media landscape, New Zealanders are increasingly getting their news less and less from traditional sources.

This was the case yesterday, as a majority of Kiwis reported receiving the news that Judith Collins had been reappointed to her Cabinet position as Corrections Minister, not from the usual outlets such as newspapers or television, but instead from the swirling and ever-darkening skies, dead ravens piling up on their front lawns, and an unseasonal chill wind.

“And I think at some point a loud, ominous bell tolled, just before the lightning began,” said 36-year-old Hamilton resident Gary Oakshaw. “There was also a distinct smell of dead rats in the air, but I think that’s just ‘cause I live in Hamilton.”

Other Hamiltonians spoken to confirmed the smell of dead rats had been occurring for “years and years.”

But several other phenomena, also present elsewhere in the country, were new to Monday afternoon, including raging pits of flame bursting forth from the earth, and the image of Collins appearing in children’s’ bedroom mirrors.

“It is fascinating how things are changing,” remarked veteran journalist and broadcaster Bill Ralston. “There was a time when people consumed the news in a much more orderly fashion; it was by appointment, really. You read the newspaper in the morning, watched the six o’clock news at night, and that was it, anything that happened in between you’d learn about at the next interval, so to speak, and go on with your life.

“Nowadays, people are getting the news all day, every day, on their phones, on their computers, their tablets, or via the mass migration of birds, stench of death, bloodcurdling howls and Ouija boards lighting on fire that comes with, say, Judith Collins being reappointed to Cabinet. So it’s all very different.”

Wellington mother-of-two-mothers Gladys Underwood said she knew “straight away” that Collins had returned to her post, when all the china tea sets in her house spontaneously shattered at once, and a visceral rumbling was heard from the bowels of the earth.

The consumption of yesterday’s news stands in stark contrast to the way New Zealanders learned of Judith Collins’ dismissal from Cabinet. At that time, once-polluted rivers became clear, the country’s babies collectively stopped crying all at once, several species returned from extinction, and Prime Minister John Key’s hair began to grow back.