I guess there are various points of view on this which have different flavours from where you sit.
From the medias perspective, all they give a crap about it readers, subscriptions, eyeballs. That in turn generates more ad revenue.
Now if you are the media, do you headline a story that has nothing to it or do you want a story that will generate discussion (this thread and others) Stories like 'Man goes home, eats, showers and goes to bed' does nothing for them. In the case of the Phoenix, the spin on it is 'those buggers in Wellington come up here and threaten us'. It generates something straight away. There has also been the reverse perspective 'Those buggers in Auckland pinch one of our games and don't turn up.'
Fluff does not sell so to me, I believe that Dome should give them that and only that. Give them a snippet of an issue and they will run the ass out of it.