Dear Scoopers,

Scoop is delighted and very proud today to launch NZ Election 08, a section of Scoop devoted to coverage of this year’s election, and which will be edited (and mostly written) by Gordon Campbell.

Gordon’s career in journalism includes a long stint at the Listener magazine as a feature writer and columnist, and his dogged and detailed coverage of the Ahmed Zaoui case was among his career highlights. For the past two years, he worked as a media and research officer for the Green Party, but has now left the Greens in order to return to journalism. (Image: Gordon Campbell interviewing Maori Party co-leader Tariana Turia.)

Each week in NZ Election08, Gordon will be writing a combination of interviews, research articles and essays and will be editing other contributions to Scoop’s election coverage as the year progresses. We expect Election08 will quickly become a must read for anyone interested in New Zealand politics, and in the directions this country is headed.

Gordon outlines the contents of the newly launched aspect of Scoop below, and his intentions for the new venture.

Best Regards

Alastair Thompson - Scoop General Manager, and, Selwyn Manning - Co-Editor.

Gordon Campbell Writes:

From today Scoop will begin publishing a series of articles and analyses bearing upon the election later this year, and its aftermath.

The aim is to provide a well grounded and provocative take on politics, in line with Scoop’s reputation for independence, quality and lateral thinking. My own feeling is that you can’t engage with readers, or earn their trust, unless the research is right there on the page. Equally, those facts are mute, unless some analysis and sense of purpose – as in, who benefits from this policy? – are also there as well.

Each week I hope the page will bring some fresh insights to the political events of the day, while also shedding light on topics relevant to voters that the mainstream media – for whatever reason - may not be covering in depth, or at all. The upcoming Immigration Bill for instance, is something that we all need to get our heads around.

True, apart from a few dozen political junkies around Wellington who can never get enough, the country is not exactly crying out for more news about politics. What I hope Scoop and I can offer here is a perspective, and a level of news evaluation that only a few blog outposts on the Web ( take a bow, No Right Turn ) are currently offering. Like many people, my default setting for news is in constant overload. Often I want someone to make sense of particular news events or even better, to challenge the tentative conclusions I’ve reached. That, basically, is the aim of this page.

In other words, it is intended to be a dialogue. Me as writer/editor, you as reader/critic. Both trying our darndest to make sense of party politics during its maddest, most extreme, election year phase.

For years, people on the liberal left have talked about starting a new magazine, and how great it would be if only there was an alternative, independent point of view regularly out there. Well, I think actually it has been here for quite a while. It's called Scoop, and I’m really pleased to be part of it.

Gordon Campbell, Editor, NZ Election 08.

• Click here to send Scoop feedback on this Section and/or to welcome Gordon to the Scoop community.

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