The state of The Kākā nation

This is a report for paid subscribers on progress and proposals for the year ahead, including ideas to pivot for faster growth to fund more in-depth investigative and policy debate projects

TLDR: This weekend I turned 55, which puts me at the upper-end of middle-aged (40-65), and The Kākā turned six months old, which makes it a juvenile, so I thought it was a good time to take stock of this Substack and talk aloud about its future.

Officially, I have another 10 years left in me to do some more useful things before I can start collecting my universal basic income. Apparently, the Kākā (ie the bird) can live to the age of 20 in the wild. That sounds about right, but I’d like to sketch out what the next 10-20 years or so might look like. :)

Firstly, thank you to all of those who have subscribed, especially those who are supporting this work as paid subscribers. I wanted to give you all an update after six months with a paywall and I plan to do that every year or so from now on.

The Kaka has been more successful in its first six months since paid subscriptions were turned on than we expected, especially after we opened up more of my types of public interest journalism articles and podcasts to the public. I’ve also just completed a Substack Fellowship, which has given me a few ideas for pivoting to reach a wider audience and build a bigger community of paid subscribers to support even more of my type of mission-led journalism about and for Aotearoa-NZ.

(I want to share more detail about that success and float a few of these ideas with paid subscribers below the paywall fold. I welcome the views and suggestions from paid subscribers about building an even stronger and more productive community of journalists, listeners and readers. I’ll update this for all subscribers in a couple of weeks after a conversation with paid subscribers and a few trials.)

A juvenile Kākā hangs on for dear life in this 2008 picture by Phillip Capper in Wellington. Thanks to Phillip via Creative Commons/Flickr.

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