Matthew Hooton, a consultant who has worked with the National Party for decades, has been appointed editor of The Post, Wellington's daily newspaper, according to Stuff.

The Post covers Parliament and government more closely than almost any other newspaper in New Zealand. Its readers are ministers, government officials, lobbyists and journalists who work at Parliament. Hooton is well known in Wellington political circles for his centre-right political views, which he has expressed through newspaper columns and radio commentary.

Hooton has spent his career working in and advising the National Party. People who read the news need to know this background, but it doesn't automatically make him unsuitable for the job. Many newspaper editors have clear political views. What matters is how those views affect the journalism.

At a newspaper that covers Parliament so closely, the line between news reporting and opinion matters more. A newspaper editor decides what stories run, which journalists get hired, and what goes on the front page. These decisions shape the news far more than opinion columns do. During a time when the National Party is in government, people will pay close attention to how Hooton keeps news and opinion separate.

Newspapers in New Zealand have become much smaller in the past decade. The Post's owner, Stuff, has cut jobs and closed offices. Editors now manage smaller teams and face pressure to keep costs down. On top of that, they work in a city where most of their readers are the same people they are covering — in this case, Parliament and government.

Wellington's political world is very small. Hooton will run into Cabinet ministers, opposition leaders and senior public servants regularly at work and around the city. He already knows many of them from his consulting job. Whether that matters for how fairly he edits the newspaper is something only time and his actual decisions will show.

No start date was announced in the Stuff report on 14 June 2026.