The rise of the New Zealand daily press

The advent of the daily press was accompanied by far-reaching changes in the nature of journalism. Prior to 1853 the New Zealand press was a few newspapers which were mainly advocates for the resident landowners and through which was coordinated the agitation for self-government. It was a colonial press united by its attempt to replace the Crown Colony Government with local government. From 1853 to the start of the commercial press, which can be dated as beginning with the Otago Daily Times in 1861, the New Zealand press remained a small number of newspapers. They shared a dominant concern with being partisan political discussion forums within each province. No longer with the shared task of winning self-government to unite them, the management of the various newspapers did not maintain the contact of pre-independence days. But a similarity of size of circulation, of upper class-biased readership, and of concentration on provincial political affairs remained. The provincial focus of newspapers was not total. All newspapers were also interested in the national political arena. Many provincial debates were conducted on the national stage. All newspapers had orientations towards the status and policies of the General Government which were largely dictated by provincial considerations. The various newspapers' various positions in regard to national politics were by no means the same but all newspapers, although taking different debating positions, were at the debate. They showed a similarity of concern and interest, if not of policy.

In the 1860s this similarity lessened. The sheer increase in the number of publications made dissimilarity more likely. But the increase was also accompanied by an increase in the types of publication. Many of the new publications were not general newspapers but were journals oriented to specific audiences. Religious and temperance publications were the first of this type but they were followed by others. Even the newspaper press became a diverse group. Many of the new newspapers, particularly those away from the main centres, were small circulation weekly publications printed on the iron-framed fixed presses of the type used in the 1840s and 1850s. The main centre newspapers, at the other extreme, were rapidly becoming large scale businesses. Differences of circulation, technology, capital investment, staff and revenue quickly grew.

- Patrick Day, The Making of the New Zealand Press 1840-1880, Wellington, 1990, p.164-5.

See also:
Blog: Wellington Anniversary Day 1850, 22 January 2015
Blog: Hold the front page, 20 May 2012
Blog: The lifeblood of a young colony, 12 June 2009