Two former Critic Te Ārohi editors have been named as finalists for the 2025 Voyager Media Awards: Joel MacManus (2018) and Fox Meyer (2022-2023). Both now based in the Beehive’s Press Gallery and working for The Spinoff and Newsroom respectively, the pair credit Critic Te Ārohi for their success in journalism. Despite their nomination, they share the same Kiwi awkwardness when receiving compliments – admitting to mostly looking forward to the free food and booze at the “swanky” May awards ceremony, where winners will be announced.
The Voyagers have been around since 1973, held annually to “encourage, showcase and acknowledge the best of New Zealand’s news media across all platforms.” Like New Zealand’s version of the Oscars (for journalism), the awards recognise and celebrate the work of all journalists, including reporters, feature writers, columnists, cartoonists, reviewers, photographers, and video journalists. Finalists are preparing their speeches and polite rejection faces before the red carpet is rolled out.
Fox is a finalist for ‘Best Up and Coming Journalist’. The science-heavy submission of three articles includes a story he broke about a Chief Science Advisor to the Prime Minister position that went unfilled for a long time, identified as part of an ongoing trend of science being an “inconvenience” to the government. “They say they’re data-based, but all of their decisions seem to be contrary to that, and one of them was not appointing this Chief Science Advisor,” said Fox.
As a Geology graduate, Fox has always had a scientific lean in his writing. Prior to joining Newsroom, Fox’s portfolio includes numerous Critic articles about the Alpine Fault (a topic he’ll chew your ear off about), chasing the elusive Ruahine mountain dolphin for 1964 magazine, and a stint in the Fiordland bush with the man who’s lived there most of his life for New Zealand Geographic. “The theme that I submitted was trying to carve out a niche for myself as somebody who understands science and data and can use that to tell stories that others can’t, and knows where to look for these things,” Fox explained.
Joel has been shortlisted for not one, but two categories: ‘Local Journalist of the Year’ and ‘Best Columnist, Opinion or Critique’. Suffice to say, the Wellington-based journo’s local stories included a lot of Wellington content that caused Critic’s eyes to glaze over (but interests were piqued at mention of a “killer bike lane”).
In his time at the helm of Critic in 2018, Joel captained the team through tumultuous seas of multiple University censorship controversies: first the Menstruation Issue that was confiscated by a prudish Campus Watch (they later apologised) and then what’s become known as ‘BongShell’, when the Proctor confiscated a bong from a student flat (he also apologised).
Witnessing the subsequent student protest across campus, Joel recently told Critic that it was the first time he realised the power of journalism: “I remember standing there outside St Dave’s and watching all these hundreds of people going by and going, ‘I printed a 400-word story in Critic last week and it’s turned into this!’ [...] You do have those little surreal moments where you go, ‘Wow, big things are happening because of something I wrote.’”
Now the Wellington Editor at The Spinoff, Joel’s passion has only grown since graduating from the Critic school of journalism seven years ago. Two recent examples of the impact he’s continued to have – wielding his pen as a sword for change – was an in-depth feature covering homelessness in Aotearoa and The Spinoff’s ‘War for Wellington’. The latter was a two-month-long editorial campaign about the city’s district plan, a big decision to change the housing rule book and allow more high-density housing – a campaign that he sees as having made its mark.
“I think I’m proud of that because, like, you know, everyone gets into journalism wanting to make a difference – and we like to believe that we do – but most stories don’t have a tangible difference [...] It’s quite hard to see a direct impact from one story, whereas that campaign was something that I really do think made a difference in terms of changing the rules to allow more high-density housing.” As one of the country’s biggest current issues, Joel said, “If I made even a small dent in that, then that’s, you know [laughs] that’s something that I can be proud of.”
Both former editors’ journalism journeys began at Critic Te Ārohi. “I pretty much credit my entire career to Critic,” said Joel, explaining he had zero inclination to be a journalist until he became involved with the student mag. “Honestly, I walked into the Critic office for the first time because I was interested in politics and I figured writing something for Critic would be more useful than getting in Reddit arguments and annoying my friends.” He found it was something he was passionate about, becoming “more and more obsessed” as he gained experience (read: fucked around and found out).
“Critic not only taught me well, and gave me a huge amount of experience – you know, I think the thing that matters with Critic is that you get actual practical experience, you’re writing stories for an audience not for a teacher. And you’re actually putting out a real publication and I think that’s so much more valuable than sitting in a journalism school class,” said Joel. Fox pointed out that he was one of two finalists in his category to have come straight from student media, the other being former Canta editor Maddy Croad. “As long as one of us wins this award I’d be pretty stoked because that’s just such a win for student journalism,” said Fox.
Asked what the Voyagers meant for Aotearoa, Joel replied, “I think journalism is important, and when you celebrate the best journalism, ideally that encourages people to do better journalism.” He noted that with the current challenges facing the profession – with successive rounds of job cuts and the threat of AI looming – it’s especially important to “compete on quality” with the “proliferation of crappy content”. “Anyone can generate 500 words of crap AI, so if we want to survive, we’ve gotta be better than that [...] I think that’s what award ceremonies like this can encourage,” he concluded.
As for the awards evening itself – in Joel’s words being a “song and dance and a lot of people slapping each other on the back” – they’re not too fussed. “I mean, it’s a great swanky party with lots of free food and drinks, that’s kind of the main reason you want to get nominated, you get to go to the party,” said Joel. Apart from that, he said it’s nice to be in the room with other journalists who are “really excited about what they do” – including the “very handsome” Fox Meyer (sent via voice note in a groupchat including Fox). Fox agreed with Joel’s sentiment: “I’m most excited about the free food and drinks, that’s really the win for me.”
Critic had one final question: would they wish Critic a happy birthday in their acceptance speech? “Yeah, alright. I’ll do it,” said Joel. Now to wait until May.