We now entered the 8th month since the NZ Herald website first ran an item titled “The Life and Tragic Death of Sonny Fai”.
Fai was a young league player who drowned while swimming a decade earlier. On the decade of his death the Herald, this being the non‑news Xmas to February period, known colloquially in New Zealand journalism as the “silly season”, in which with everyone on holiday, reporters have to create stories, they decided to run one on Fai.
By all accounts he was “promising” in this minor sport but too young to have achieved anything noteworthy. Creating this “story” was silly. Keeping it permanently on their pay wall website is simply mind‑boggling.