As of today The Spinoff website and Radio New Zealand will be 'sharing journalism.' But the first Spinoff article to appear on the RNZ website is an advertorial for a building firm selling kitset homes. Political science lecturer and commentator Bryce Edwards has labelled the deal 'dodgy'.





RADIO NEW Zealand and The Spinoff announced today that they have agreed to a 'content partnership". The commercial website and the public broadcaster say that they will be sharing each other's journalism from this point on.





"The Spinoff is the source of some of New Zealand's wittiest, and well-thought, journalism and we're very much looking forward to being able to feature it," RNZ's head of digital, Glen Scanlon, said in a press release.





But there's little resembling journalism - either 'well-thought' or 'witty' in the first stab at 'content partnership'. Standing out like a sore thumb on a otherwise good non-commercial website, RNZ has republished a Spinoff article : 'Let Prefabs Sprout: Are Kitsets A Housing Crisis Solution?'





Demonstrating remarkably poor editorial judgement, RNZ has gone ahead and published an article that exploits a serious social crisis to advertise the kitset homes of EasyBuild, a building firm based in Masterton.





This is advertorial - not journalism. It has no place on the website of a public broadcaster.







