Last night, our fearless editoress Joanna appeared on Media7. The episode was dedicated to regional media coverage of mayoral campaigns, from Northland to Southland. Joanna talked about the Wellingtonista’s mayoral candidate questionnaire, including that one candidate who couldn’t follow directions.

Jo did us proud, and skilfully managed to glamorously coordinate with the Media 7 set. You can watch the episode in full here.

After seeing the clips of regional telly in other parts of New Zealand, it makes me wish for Wellington to have its own low-budget, slightly crappy regional television channel.

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And speaking of Wellington local body politics and TVNZ 7, on Wednesday night, Back Benches held a debate with the Wellington mayoral candidates, focusing on transport and tourism. Watch the episode here.

For the past couple of years, we keep hearing people tell us not to go to a certain ethnic restaurant because “they were filmed by Target scraping leftover food back into the food to sell” and various other stories along the same lines. We got an email recently saying that someone else had heard the rumours, but had also heard that Target never actually filmed there. So we put on our Serious Investigative Journalist Hats, and sent out two very easy emails set out on a quest to discover the truth. Target wrote us back:

Yes we’ve been getting that for years too probably because target was filmed just around the corner at top shelf’s office down there for the first two or three years. Its never been on Target and I have confirmed this with the owner. We think that for a camera to be in the kitchen it must have been another staff member filming. I have no idea if its true or false but again it wasn’t filmed by us and no one in our office ever recalls seeing it. Urban myth?

And just to doublecheck, we emailed an Environmental Health Officer at the Wellington City Council, in the Building Consents and Licensing Services, who told us that this particular restaurant has a Certificate of Registration valid until July 2011. So can people please stop spreading this rumour? It’s ridiculous and untrue. If you don’t like the food, don’t eat there, but find another target for your defamation.

And no, we’re not going to name the restaurant in question if you haven’t heard the rumours, because mud clearly sticks regardless of whether it’s deserved or not.

During the school holidays the good folk at the Film Archive run a kids movie programmed called Mini Sized Square Eyes (not to be confused with the Square Eyes Foundation).

Every Monday, Wednesday and Friday at 11am during the holidays the kids can be entertained for an hour with gems from the Archive’s extensive collections, including the original film version of Where the Wild Things Are, early Walt Disney animation and classic slices of NZ experiments on film. Screenings designed for kids aged 4 – 12 years. Buggies welcome.

Entry by gold coin donation.

North of Wellington is a sunny paradise, known as Petone. Petone and its surrounding suburbs now have their own website created by local webby types, Brent Dickens and Michael Haymes. Click Local sets out to give local people, groups, businesses, artists and organisers a place to promote their ideas and events. Its evolution will depend very much on the people who contribute, so it would be great to see heaps of people get involved.

If you’re keen, contact Brent Dickens: brent@clicklocal.org.nz