Lasting Impressions

Lasting Impressions reveals how our early newspapers covered the full gamut of colonial life: from the mundane to the momentous - like reporting from the frontlines of the New Zealand Wars - and everything in between.

"Newspapers back then were everything," says author Ian F. Grant. "Except for face-to-face conversations, leaflets and posters, they were the only medium of news and information for a community. As such, they were vital to economic development and social cohesion. Newspapers built national identity, they bolstered the self-confidence of new communities, and they helped settlers identify as New Zealanders as early as the 1870s."

Grant wanted to go beyond a record of when the newspapers started and who their owners and editors were, "to write a social history placing newspapers in the context of life in the communities they prospered or failed in." The book was launched by Sir Geoffrey Palmer at the National Library on 10 October.

For the first time in a New Zealand newspaper history there are sections on the burgeoning weeklies phenomenon, the distinctive goldfields' press, and the numerous Maori newspapers that flourished around the turn of the century.

"The history of Māori newspapers, which reflected high literacy levels, is fascinating in itself," says Grant. "There was simply nothing comparable to them in the US, Canada or Australia."

There are detailed descriptions of the beginnings of the newspaper business in New Zealand, documenting the papers that spread throughout the country close in the wake of the first settlers; the proliferation of provincial papers; and the difficulties faced by World War One newspapers. There are 120 fascinating 'break out' stories peppered throughout the book such as the arrival of women in the Press Gallery, vicious spats between rival editors, and early libel laws (and the lack of them).

The book has been a decade long labour of love for Grant, who carried out much of the research while the Alexander Turnbull Library's first adjunct scholar. He was able to capitalise on new technology – the Papers Past online archive of New Zealand print media launched in 2007 – not dreamt of when Dr Guy Scholefield published his Newspapers in New Zealand in 1958.

"Papers Past has revolutionised research and ensures that Lasting Impressions is as comprehensive a history of our newspapers as is possible," says Grant. The book is published in association with the Alexander Turnbull Library and Grant acknowledges that it is rare for the country's leading research library to be so closely associated with a book project. It will be a valuable reference book for academics and librarians as well as a highly readable social history.