Today is the last day of BuzzFeed News. I wanted the last word on it to be from the people who worked there. Here's the final post, the Oral History of BuzzFeed News:
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Alex Spence
@alexGspence
Investigations Editor, . Based in Auckland. Previously at The Times, Politico, BuzzFeed News, North & South. Contact me at alex.spence@nzme.co.nz
AucklandJoined August 2011
Alex Spence’s Tweets
I’d love for someone to show me some data on this, but I’m very sceptical this week’s events in Wellington will have any real impact on the GE. That implies (a) voters are paying attention (they mostly don’t), and (b) voters make voting choices on party politics (they don’t).
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Maybe this is a bit out of date now - my column for the Herald from January about tensions in the Greens and the party's inevitable self-sabotaging prior to the election: bit.ly/HeraldGreens20
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Doctors say EDs are "completely inappropriate" for people in acute mental distress for long stays. But mental health services are overstretched and psychiatric units are often over 100% capacity. So people are getting "marooned" in ED.
Read the story: nzherald.co.nz/nz/94-hours-in
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A doctor raised the alarm about the extraordinarily long waits in an email to hospital executives, saying the 94-hour wait was "the longest any patient, under ANY service, has ever waited for an inpatient bed in our department".
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58 hours...
65 hours...
94 hours.
That's how long three acutely mentally ill patients waited in Auckland Hospital's ED to be admitted to the psychiatric ward in March.
Exclusive in today's WH:
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Chris Luxon says he's going to relieve pressure on public specialist mental health services by increasing support in the community for people with mild/moderate problems. Which is broadly what Labour's approach has been.
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These tags are so moronic. The ABC is of course "government funded" but "public media/broadcaster" would be more accurate. But they are not designed to inform or help users, rather Elon wants to punish the media.
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Twitter slaps ‘government-funded media’ tag on ABC, SBS theaustralian.com.au/business/media
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We asked for data from all DHBs showing how many reports staff filed in the last 3y when staffing fell to unsafe levels.
And we asked how many incidents of violence against staff were recorded.
Some of the numbers are 🤯.
nzherald.co.nz/nz/exhausted-d
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Hospital employees in New Zealand filed more than 23,000 formal reports warning of unsafe levels of staffing in the past three years, a Weekend Herald investigation has found.
A glimpse into the crisis in frontline health services after the pandemic:
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Valiant effort by colleagues to hold Te Whatu Ora to the OIA, but sadly familiar to anyone who's tried to get information through official channels in the new health structure.
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Health agency @TeWhatuOra has failed to provide Official Information Act request information on topics of public interest. @CcileJourno reports. #businessofhealth #FreeToRead businessdesk.co.nz/article/health
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People on here are calling for tougher accountability rules on lobbying, OIA, etc, and okay, sure, those are important things. But if they’re gonna work NZ also needs to fix another massive gap and that’s having watchdogs with the powers, staff, and inclination to enforce them.
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Waikato Hospital is sending patients to Auckland because nearly 80 people on its cardiac surgery wait lists are overdue, including those too sick to leave hospital.
An investigation is underway after a patient died while overdue treatment.
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Awkward revelations for lobbyist/PR offices around the beltway ... and plainly more to come at RNZ
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One of the biggest disappointments about returning to live in Auckland is not having Test cricket.
Kane Williamson just passed 8000 test runs, at 54.42 with 27 hundreds. Don’t think we’ll ever again have a Kiwi batter as good as this guy.
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Social media's role in the youth mental health crisis has been generating a lot of debate in the US recently, but 'NZ has been incredibly slow to respond'.
Our authorities are behind the curve but there is some work happening. Exclusive report here:
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This follows my report in Saturday's Weekend Herald on the growing concerns about teens watching mental illness-related videos on TikTok
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"Parents just need to find a way to have these conversations with their children."
Listen to this brave interview by Megan, a 20yo student, about how mental illness content on social media impacted her on today's Front Page pod.
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Getting plenty of feedback already this morning - lots of teens & parents concerned about this topic - and keen for more. We plan to keep reporting on it. I'm at alex.spence@nzme or DM me for Signal.
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This is a v complicated area that needs a broad response not just from the tech cos, but across sociey & govt, from better education to legislation/regulation. Lots of heat about it in the US right now, much less in NZ.
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TikTok is also facing serious questions about the MH material on its platform, partly because of the power of its For You algorithm. "TikTok has completely changed the game," says Megan, a 20yo student, who spoke to me for the article.
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Last month, we reported on a private Instagram community that had raised alarm among public authorities three years ago. The deaths of some young women in that network are being investigated by the Cororner's office.
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This isn't about whether social media _itself_ is harmful (a separate & heated debate), but the MH-related content kids are consuming on there and why users, parents, researchers, teachers, etc are worried.
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Today in , we've published the second part of my investigation into the teen mental health crisis and social media, looking at the explosion of mental illness-related content on TikTok.
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Teens, mental health and social media: 'People don’t understand how toxic it is.' Part 1 of an investigation into how an explosion of mental health-related content online, much of it incredibly dark, is intersecting with our youth mental health crisis.
nzherald.co.nz/nz/teens-menta
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