You know you are old when the subjects in a history book are people you have met.
I had that experience ambling through Ian F. Grant’s Pressing On, the second volume of his history of New Zealand newspapers.
It is shorter than his first volume Lasting Impressions – 670 pages against 676 pages – and covers the period 1921 to 2000. However, it wasn’t the modern era that threw up names I knew well. I found myself recognising characters that first entered the industry before or shortly after the Second World War.
There is one particular photograph to which I was drawn. It pictures the editorial staff of the Hawera Star in 1948. In the front row is a fresh-faced Pat Booth who would later earn an indelible place in New Zealand journalism as a crusading editor and investigative journalist. At the end of the row stands Harry Dansey, still bearing the memories of the fierce fighting he witnessed as a member of the 28th Māori Battalion.
Pat was news editor on the Auckland Star when I began my cadetship in 1965. Harry, who would later become the country’s second Race relations Conciliator, was one of my mentors on the Star. When I saw him staring at me from the book, I was reminded of the time he told me about seeing a German soldier killed by a flame thrower. I could see that memory etched into his face.
There were other names and pictures that leapt from the page. This, I thought, is a history book that takes me on a meandering trip down memory lane. I am not so old, however, to have had the same sense of connection with the first volume.
Both works are invaluable records of this country’s history. They tie together social, cultural, political and commercial strands of our past that were embodied by our newspapers.
Pressing On divides our newspaper history by time and space. It begins in the decade at which First Impressions ends – the 1920s – and progresses geographically through succeeding decades. It deals with the local and provincial press with the same attention to detail that it brings to the metropolitan titles.
No newspaper is too small to rate a mention. The smallest was the Te Puke Press which measured six inches (17 cm) by two inches (6cm). Okay, it appeared only once at that size. It was in 1942 and newsprint rationing, and the supply chain, conspired to leave the newspaper almost paperless as it went to press. I can only guess at the type size. Perhaps more illustrative of the small size of some of our newspapers was the fact that the Kawhia Settler (1901-1936) was serving a population of only 238 when it folded.
Nor was any newspaper too remote to make the book. I had always assumed that the newspapers published in Invercargill were the most southerly in. the world, but I was wrong. Ian Grant informs us that the honour went to the Owaka News (five kilometres further south). To describe it as idiosyncratic probably pays it too great a compliment. It began publication in 1932 and the 1934 copy pictured in the book begins with this front page epithet: “Worry to a coffin adds a nail no doubt, and every grin so merry pulls one out.” The owner-editor, Clarence James, apparently did not take the advice. The paper folded after he suffered a fatal heart attack in 1936.
Nuggets like that can be found throughout the book. There is a graphic account, for example, of photographer Bill Hopper being seriously assaulted during the 1951 waterfront strike and his camera thrown into Wellington Harbour (it was retrieved by Harbour Board divers). Grant’s headline on the panel: “A genuine beat-up”.
What marks Pressing On as a unique contribution to the record of New Zealand history is the fact that it devotes considerable attention to publications outside the four main centres. Other titles have recorded the back story of our metropolitan papers (even if the history of Auckland’s newspapers is less well served than elsewhere). Although they are also embraced by this book, we learn a lot more of provincial and local titles than has previously been available.
Newspapers proliferated in the provinces. We learn, for example, that Wairarapa boasted two dailies and five bi-weeklies at a time when its population was less than 10,000. One of those non-dailies was the Wairarapa Standard which was founded in 1872 and served Greytown for 70 years. The town’s population was only 1200 when it folded.
Relations between adjacent or competing titles were not always cordial. Further north, the Franklin Times caustically observed that the Waiuku News was “ahead of us in one respect, and that is in using the scissors” (presumably to cut and paste its rival’s stories).
Rivalry in the metropolitan centres comes in for its fair share of attention. The protracted newspaper war in Christchurch in the 1930s was bitter and fought out in boardrooms as well as in the newspaper columns. That battle – which saw both the Christchurch Times and Christchurch Sun die – illustrates the high attrition rate that our newspaper titles suffered over the years.
Attrition also afflicted the families whose names were long associated with our newspapers: Crawford, Horton, Leys, Muir, Blundell… the list goes on. Each recurs in the book until its association is broken by ownership change. One of the few remaining links with the past is Sir Julian Smith, the fifth generation of his family to run the Otago Daily Times.
Pressing On is a rich amalgam of what appeared in newspaper columns and what transpired in the boardroom. Its list of references extends to 32 pages. The author seems on firmer ground, though, as an historical chronicler than as an interpreter of more contemporary events. In the latter part of the book his range of sources and some of his conclusions are contestable.
That, however, is less important than what he has contributed to the New Zealand record. Ian Grant’s two volumes are without parallel in enriching our knowledge of an aspect of our past that informs so much of our understanding of the nation’s history.
However, his book is more than merely a record. It embodies and preserves aspects of the rich newspaper experience that would otherwise be fragmented or lost. And it doesn’t end with names. Who, after my generation has passed, will be aware of the unique atmosphere of a building in which the news is written, set in hot metal type, then printed for mass distribution? Ian Grant recounts the words of my old friend and fellow journalist the late Gordon McLauchlan recalling “a very peculiar smell, the amalgam of ink, paper, and molten lead”. Once smelt, never forgotten.
Pressing On: The story of New Zealand’s newspapers 1921-2000 by Ian F. Grant (Fraser Books $69.50)
New Zealand Geographic appeal
Publisher James Frankham is launching a subscription appeal to put New Zealand Geographic on a better financial footing. As he noted in an email yesterday, “…traffic from search and social continues to plummet, and cost pressure on the print side increases…”
So what? All publishers tout for subscribers these days.
However, Frankham’s appeal is different. Not only does the magazine present a unique and important perspective on New Zealand that we need to see preserved, but its appeal comes with undertakings that are refreshingly novel.
All change
From next Friday, all relevant advertisements will be subject to two new codes introduced by the Advertising Standards Authority.
The Children’s Advertising Code provides clear guidelines to ensure advertisements do not encourage unsafe practices, promote bullying, encourage peer pressure or unhealthy body images, or include content that is not age-appropriate for children. It has been extended to ensure a high level of social responsibility in advertising to children under 16 years of age, across all advertising in all media platforms, at all times.
The Food and Beverage Advertising Code extends safeguards to prevent advertising “occasional food and beverages” to children under 16. It also strengthens provisions relating to sponsorship.
Between 2017 and 2023 there were 51 complains to the ASA under the Children and Young People’s Code. Sixty one per cent related to food and beverage advertising.
The new codes are on the ASA website. You can access it here .