The evening press 1884-1894: the life and death of a Wellington daily newspaper

Abstract

Journalism has never achieved the status of literature, although many authors of repute have been practising journalists. Society has been satisfied to make a distinction between mercenary craft and untarnished art, between the chronicling of brief fact and the creation of a lasting work of the imagination. Even the practised student of literature is unlikely to perceive his daily newspaper as, essentially, a piece of writing: a part of that same element that forms his professional environment. He may do well to reflect that society is governed as much by the sensation of the moment as by the kind of wisdom enshrined in traditional art. If newspapers are the ephemera of the publishing world it is not fundamentally a question of merit, or want of it, that makes them so, but one of purpose, a consequence of their service to "the cutting edge of the present." The final wisdom in human affairs is a compound of knowledge and experience: its exercise in politics has been called "the art of the possible". As one of the mass media the daily press is part of the process of government in its widest sense, and commands attention as a form of writing that profoundly affects the functioning of society. That the press will continue to remain a factor in the conduct of human affairs there is no doubt, despite the present novelty of other media, notably, television. Recent testimony to this can be found in reactions to a prolonged shutdown of newspaper production in New York. Closer to home, we have official concern at the prospect of our local newspapers passing into the control of overseas interests. Probably the most acrimonious debate of the 1965 Parliamentary session in New Zealand was that which accompanied the passage of the News Media Ownership Bill, a measure prompted in the first instance by the uncertain future of a Wellington daily newspaper. It is perhaps significant that the crest of the initial wave of interest which followed the introduction of television in New Zealand also marked a new phase in the expansion of newspaper journalism, in the form of the Sunday newspaper The Dominion Sunday Times was first published on 30.5.65. The Sunday News was first published on 6.6.65. It would be wrong, however, to regard these signs of continuing vitality as auguries of a brightening future. The "golden era" of New Zealand journalism is a century back in the past, when "few townships appeared too small to support a local newspaper or were reluctant to offer it hospitality"; Scholefield, Guy H.: Newspapers in New Zealand, A.H. & A.W. Reed Wellington, 1958; p.6. when, In the twentyyear period 1860-1879, 181 papers were founded, while 87 ceased publication. Ibid., p.6