Pressing On

Pressing On by Ian F. Grant is the second volume of the first comprehensive history of New Zealand newspapers in 60 years. It covers the period 1921-2000. In 1920, when Lasting Impressions ended, the large number of newspapers in the country were the profitable, well-respected vehicles of nearly all the news from around the world and around the corner welcomed into households in the largest cities and smallest hamlets. Newspapers were also the principal means by which manufacturers and merchants sold their products and services to people. This strange amalgam – provision of a public service in an essentially commercial operation – worked, for the most part, very successfully. All that changed over the next 80 years. By 2000, the New Zealand newspaper market had changed forever – and in ways that put its very survival at risk. Pressing On is the story of how and why this happened.