About

Kia ora, I’m Gwynn Compton and I initially set up Local Aotearoa as a podcast about local government and democracy in New Zealand. However, given the demands on producing podcasts - especially in terms of finding time to research, record, and produce episodes - the project stalled.

Despite that, I still wanted to find a way to promote local government and improve people’s understanding of the sector and the issues it faces. With that in mind, I decided to switch up what I was doing with Local Aotearoa and give it more of a news angle with more of a focus on written pieces (which aren’t dependent on having a nice quiet space to record things in, unlike podcasts).

Initially this will be a mix of stories and opinion pieces I’ve written, and I’ll try to link to and promote as much of the great local democracy reporting that’s taking place around the country as possible. I’ll also hopefully be able to record the odd episode of the podcast too, but that’s dependent on other demands on my time.

Looking further ahead, and my professional life permitting, I’m hoping to progressively expand what’s available on Local Aotearoa to include more in-depth premium content that would be available to paid subscribers.

If you’re interested in learning a little bit more about me as a person, you can pop on over to www.gwynncompton.co.nz.