If it is valid to assume that the character and characteristics of a people are shaped mainly by racial origin and environment, there are facts about the European settlement of New Zealand, the influence of novel conditions of living upon the settlers, which may assist our attempts to trace and explain the evolution of New Zealand society into what it has become today.

Argentina

Buenos Aires: Hon. Representative of the Department of Industries and Commerce.

Australia

Canberra: High Commissioner, New Zealand High Commission.

Sydney: First Secretary, New Zealand High Commission, Sydney (Consular) Office.

Trade Commissioner and Commercial Counsellor, New Zealand Trade Commission.

Melbourne: Trade Commissioner and First Secretary (Commercial), New Zealand Trade Commission.

Brisbane: Sales and Publicity Representative of Department of Tourist and Publicity.

Belgium

Brussels: Consul, New Zealand Consulate.

Britain

London: High Commissioner, New Zealand High Commission.

Burma

Rangoon: Hon. New Zealand Government Agents.

Canada

Ottawa: High Commissioner, New Zealand High Commission.

Montreal: Trade Commissioner, New Zealand Trade Commission.

Vancouver: Trade Commissioner, New Zealand Trade Commission.

Ceylon

High Commissioner (resident in New Delhi).

European Economic Community

Ambassador (resident in London).

Brussels: Minister, Deputy Head of Mission, New Zealand Mission to the EEC.

Fiji

Suva: Hon. New Zealand Government Agents; Trade Correspondent.

Nandi: Trade Correspondent.

France

Paris: Ambassador, New Zealand Embassy.

Ghana

Accra: Trade Commissioner, New Zealand Trade Commission.

Greece

Athens: Consul-General, New Zealand Consulate-General.

Hong Kong

Trade Commissioner, New Zealand Trade Commission.

India

New Delhi: High Commissioner, New Zealand High Commission.

Calcutta: Hon. New Zealand Government Agents.

Indonesia

Djakarta: Minister, New Zealand Legation.

Jamaica

Trade Commissioner (resident in Port of Spain).

Japan

Tokyo: Ambassador, New Zealand Embassy.

Korea

Ambassador (resident in Tokyo).

Laos

Ambassador (resident in Bangkok).

Malaysia

Kuala Lumpur: High Commissioner, New Zealand High Commission.

Singapore: Deputy High Commissioner, Office of the Deputy High Commissioner for New Zealand in Malaysia.

Nepal

Ambassador (resident in New Delhi).

Netherlands

The Hague: Consul, New Zealand Consulate.

South Africa

Durban: Hon. Representative of the Department of Tourist and Publicity.

South-East Asia Treaty Organisation

Bangkok: Council Representative, New Zealand Embassy.

Switzerland

Geneva: Consul-General, New Zealand Consulate-General.

Tahiti

Papeete: Trade Correspondent.

Thailand

Bangkok: Ambassador, New Zealand Embassy.

Trinidad and Tobago

Port of Spain: Trade Commissioner, New Zealand Trade Commission.

United Nations

New York: Permanent Representative, New Zealand Mission to the United Nations.

Geneva: Permanent Representative to the European Office, New Zealand Mission to the European Office of the United Nations.

United States of America

Washington: Ambassador, New Zealand Embassy. New York: Consul-General, New Zealand Consulate-General.

San Francisco: Consul-General, New Zealand Consulate-General.

Los Angeles: Acting Consul, New Zealand Consulate.

Vietnam

Ambassador (resident in Bangkok).

Western Samoa

Apia: High Commissioner, New Zealand High Commission.

The trade group to which all daily newspaper publishers belong is the Newspaper Proprietors' Association; the New Zealand Journalists' Association looks after the industrial and semi-professional interests of reporters, photographers, and other literary workers.

by Reginald Brian O'Neill (1932–65), Journalist, Christchurch.

The 20 oldest papers surviving in New Zealand are: Taranaki Herald, 4 Aug 1852; Wanganui Chronicle, 18 Sep 1856; Taranaki Daily News, 14 May 1857; Hawke's Bay Herald-Tribune, 24 Sep 1857; Southland Daily News, 18 Feb 1861; Christchurch Press, 25 May 1861; Otago Daily Times, 5 Nov 1861; Southland Times, 12 Nov 1862; Evening Star, Dunedin, 1 May 1863; New Zealand Herald, Auckland, 13 Nov 1863; Weekly News, Auckland, 28 Nov 1863; Bruce Herald, Milton, 14 Apr 1864; Timaru Herald, 11 June 1864; Evening Post, Wellington, 8 Feb 1865; Grey River Argus, Greymouth, 14 Nov 1865; Nelson Evening Mail, 5 Mar 1866; Greymouth Evening Star, 12 Mar 1866; Marlborough Express, Blenheim, 21 Apr 1866; Wanganui Herald, 4 Jun 1867; Christchurch Star, 14 May 1868.

There has been little published about the New Zealand press and journalism. The General Assembly Library, Wellington, has the most complete collection of files of past and present papers. Documents relating to early newspaper history can be found mainly in the Alexander Turnbull Library, Wellington, and the Hocken Library, Otago University, Dunedin.

The main source of early information is an article by T. M. Hocken published in the Transactions of the New Zealand Institute (p. 99, Vol. 34, 1901), and a paper discussing Early Days of Printing in New Zealand, by H. Hill (p. 407, Vol. 33 of the Transactions, 1900); a survey of newspapers in the 1840–52 period is given in the bibliographical section of Crown Colony Government in New Zealand (McLintock, A. H., 1958); and The Press 1861–1961 (O'Neill, R. B., 1963). The most complete survey of the press as a whole from the beginning almost to the present day is G. H. Scholefield's (A. W. and A. H. Reed) Newspapers in New Zealand. Several theses on individual newspapers are catalogued in university libraries, but the only detailed coverage of a province's newspapers is J. T. Paul's The Newspaper Press of Otago and Southland. Valuable information is being collected and published in supplements as individual newspapers reach their centenaries.

Statutes affect aspects other than publication. Most of them, like the Medical Advertisements Act and the Stock Remedies Act, govern advertising. The laws of libel and copyright are of important moment to newspaper publishers, and scarcely a year passes by without some paper or other being the defendant in a Supreme Court suit for alleged defamation. Papers have to be careful in quoting from published material that may be copyright; but anyone can copy almost anything from a newspaper, if he wants to, without fear of an action. Copyright of articles in newspapers is restricted to those stories which bear a reserved line with them; all other matter can be reprinted 24 hours after publication. Statute law and by-laws also govern the sales of papers on the streets and by children. Most morning papers are delivered by adult runners; most evening papers by schoolboys, for children cannot by law be employed before a certain time of the morning, a time too late for the delivery of most morning papers which will have been tossed over suburban fences before dawn.

In recent years the New Zealand press has entered the Sunday newspaper field, the earliest of these being Sunday Feature News which was published in Christchurch from August 1957 until February 1958. The oldest surviving Sunday newspaper, The City Express, was first published in New Plymouth on 5 June 1963. This was followed in Auckland, on 20 October 1963, by Sunday News. In 1965 Truth (N.Z.) Ltd. bought a controlling interest in this paper and, beginning with the issue of 6 June 1965, is publishing simultaneous editions of Sunday News in Auckland and Wellington. On 30 May 1965 the Wellington Publishing Co. (The Dominion) published the first number of a new paper, The New Zealand Sunday Times.

For some years now evening newspapers in the four main cities have on Saturday evenings produced sports editions with magazine reading sections. Similar sports papers can also be found in Nelson and Hawke's Bay. In former times the weekly editions of many newspapers – no fewer than 22 of them at the turn of the century – were important adjuncts to newspapers. Some of them circulated throughout the land and even to Australia. Among the most prominent were the Weekly Press (Christchurch), which led the field with a record circulation of 40,000 copies an issue in 1901; the Weekly News (Auckland), the Otago Witness (Dunedin), and the Canterbury Times (Christchurch). These papers, and others similar, began as mere reprints of their parent dailies, but later they developed characters of their own; they led the way in pictorial journalism towards the end of last century with half-tone pictures superseding line drawings. Their lavishly illustrated Christmas annuals (the covers and some inside pages were in colour) were fine examples of the lithographer's and printer's art. All but the Weekly News (founded 1863) failed to meet the changing pattern of newspaper circulation. As the distribution systems of the dailies improved, with better roads, with new bus services, with more frequent rail trips, and even with air deliveries, the value of the weeklies lessened, and one by one they closed down – the Canterbury Times in 1917, the Weekly Press in 1928, and the Otago Witness in 1932.

Seventy weekly papers still circulate, but most of them are confined to small towns. Four dominate their field with national circulations that rival some of the metropolitan dailies. At the top of the list is Truth (Wellington), followed by the Women's Weekly (Auckland), the Weekly News (Auckland), and the Listener (Wellington). A fifth large weekly, the Free Lance (Wellington), ceased in 1961.

An imaginary, but typical metropolitan paper in New Zealand might have a circulation approaching 100,000. It would turn over more than £1 million a year. A quarter of this sum would come from 3d. sales, the rest from the sale of advertising space. The paper would employ 300 people and its wages bill would be over £300,000 a year. Production costs would be over £700,000. The paper would be printed on a six-unit rotary machine which cost £185,000. Each day the machine would print more than 25 tons of newsprint costing about £1,800. The rate of printing would be up to 70,000 copies an hour, compared with Samuel Revans's Columbia press capacity of about 200 copies an hour. In the bulk store of this imaginary newspaper there would be enough rolls – each weighing about 1,600 lb – put aside to provide for the printing of normal-sized (32 page) papers for eight months without replenishment. Literary staff – reporters, photographers, copy readers, proof readers, leader writers, and specialists — would number about 80 people. Another 40 people would be employed as part-time correspondents, sporting reporters, or critics and reviewers. The rest of the full-time staff would be office workers dealing with accounting, advertising, and subscription; or skilled mechanical labour involving over 12 trades – from electrical engineering to photoengraving.

Individual newspapers have installed their own wire-photo machines since the Second World War. These ingenious instruments work over an ordinary telephone toll circuit for the transmission and reception of news pictures. Transmitters are generally portable and can be used by photographers at any Post Office toll station to send illustrations back to their home offices. Some offices have introduced teletypesetting machines, mainly for classified advertisements. Some receive advertisements 24 hours a day by telephone through an automatic answering machine.

Probably the most significant post-war development has been the establishment of a papermaking mill based on the man-made forests in the North Island. Until 1955, when the Tasman Pulp and Paper Co. began producing newsprint from its plant at Kawerau in the Bay of Plenty, newspapers had depended on imports of paper. Moreover, with only one newsprint machine operating at Kawerau, newspaper proprietors were loath to change over to wholly New Zealand supply lest they alienate traditional sources by not continuing with contracts that might be difficult to renew in the event of accident to the single machine. When, however, a second machine came into operation, many proprietors greatly increased their New Zealand orders. Some papers are now printed wholly on New Zealand made newsprint, except for special issues or important occasions. New Zealand newsprint is said to be furry, but tougher than most overseas brands (although delivery runners find it harder to fold). Canadian newsprint is fine but brittle and more liable to break as it races at high speed through the cylinders of a rotary printing press. Newspapers use over 52,000 tons of paper worth about £4 million a year. Daily newspapers produce over 290 million copies in a year. The value of these papers is over £105 million, nearly 75 per cent of it from the sale of advertising space. The rest comes from subscribers and from casual sales.

Other recent significant developments in the newspaper industry in the last few years have been a combination of newspapers and job-printing and publishing interests in three North Island cities; capital increases, some of them with the intention of combating rumoured take-over bids from Australian publishing organisations; the transition of the New Zealand Herald proprietary into a public company, including shareholding by members of the staff; the takeover of the Westport News to be printed in the home town of its purchaser, the Nelson Evening Mail; the direct linking of Parliament by teleprinter channels with some newspaper offices; the formation of an independent news reporting agency in Wellington with metropolitan and provincial subscribers; and steps by all newspapers to combat competition for advertising, news, and staff from improvements and innovations to the New Zealand Broadcasting Corporation's radio and television services.

The acquisition of Palmerston North's morning Times (circulation 11,000) and its unexpected closure by the Wellington Publishing Co. was a significant event in 1963. In its wake came an amazingly successful weekly, the News, delivered free (mainly by milk vendors) to nearly every household in the city; and as it offered a cheap alternative avenue for local advertising it was supported enthusiastically by local businessmen. Its proprietor, D. A. Davies, was former managing editor of the Times and had been publishing the free Feilding Herald for more than a year. These developments indicated an important trend in New Zealand journalism. They certainly gave concern to the established papers, which depend on sales for about 25 per cent of their revenue, whereas the “throwaway”, usually of six to a dozen tabloid pages each week or month, was paid for by local advertising and circulated to every home in a district surrounding a suburban shopping area. Most “throwaways” are conducted by professional journalists and many have five-figure circulations envied by conventional daily papers.

At the beginning of 1964 the Wellington Publishing Co.'s Dominion was under pressure of a takeover bid by a London-based international publishing group headed by Lord Thomson. Earlier approaches by the Australian Consolidated Press (which has bought land in Auckland) had failed, but other Australian and Auckland newspaper interests have also entered the “takeover” field. As a result of the Government's attitude, the London takeover offer was withdrawn. In 1965 the News Media Ownership Act was passed which safeguards the present position.

Although business moves predominate in the list of developments, news is still the primary consideration of newspapers, whose outlook was summarised by a chairman of the New Zealand Press Association a few years ago when he said:

Circulations seem to vindicate the claim. The Timaru Herald, for example, has a near saturation coverage in South Canterbury, where it sells one paper for every four people in the total population of the district. The smallest of the metropolitan papers has a circulation of more than 30,000 papers a day. New Zealand's biggest paper, the New Zealand Herald, sells about 210,000 papers a day, about one and a half times the number sold by its rival, the Auckland Star, the biggest evening paper in the country.

One of the most interesting features of the modern newspaper press of New Zealand is the concerted effort of provincial proprietaries to gain a larger share of the advertising revenue, particularly that paid by national advertisers – oil companies, soap makers, food and drug manufacturers, travel concerns, and so on. Provincial papers could not continue without money from advertising; national advertisements have tended to be monopolised by the big city dailies. Five out of seven dailies publish outside the main centres; and the aggregate potential readers in the areas they deliver to comprise nearly six-tenths of the total population. By combining to quote special rates they hope to gain more of national advertisement revenue. Some provincial newspapers (always relatively strong) have increased their circulations faster than the metropolitan press. Most of them have excellent equipment and a few, more than the metropolitans, use spot colour for advertisements. Official figures show that, on the average, people who live in or near to self-sufficient provincial cities and towns have more purchasing power than their big-city cousins; in one recent year, £85 per annum more, the big-city average being £943 per annum. Retail sales statistics show the extra money is spent in the nearest main shopping area.

These facts help to account for New Zealand's thriving provincial press, which prints the advertisements for the well-patronised retailers as well as conducts substantial job-printing businesses. At the present time this section competes for national advertisements as a separate trade group called the New Zealand Provincial Press Inc. They have 18 members in 14 cities; and recently audited circulations ranged from 6,600 (Marlborough Express) to more than 19,000 (Southland Times) a day; and their combined circulations topped that of the New Zealand Herald. The typical strength of the provincial press is shown by the case of Gisborne, with a population of over 25,000 people. The average Gisborne taxpayer paid £414 income tax in a recent year, the second highest in New Zealand. The Gisborne Herald's circulation at the time was 10,500.

Despite the scattered population and the isolation of individual papers, there is a remarkable uniformity of presentation of news. This is partly the result of identical overseas and inland news being received through a national news agency to which every daily paper belongs. Highly individual papers with pugnacious, uncompromising, and influential owners, editors, and political opinions are a memory of another age; papers these days report the news in a manner more impartial, more balanced, and more complete than did the press of “the good old days”. Editorial opinions, now not nearly so influential among a highly literate people with opportunity for direct access to news sources and publications of contrary opinion, confine their expression to separate columns of leading articles.

Direct competition by rival newspapers in the same town is unknown, for no centre produces more than one paper on the same morning or evening each day. The eight dailies in the four main cities – Auckland, Wellington, Christchurch, and Dunedin – have an aggregate circulation of over 700,000 copies a day; 31 dailies in smaller towns sell 270,000 copies a day. A trade estimate is that almost every household takes at least one paper; and that each copy is, on average, read by two people.

For example, the New Zealand Herald (Auckland) and the Dominion (Wellington) cover the North Island between them, as well as their home cities; and the Christchurch Press circulates over much of the South Island. These three papers are favoured by the “dead” hours of the early morning for their wide-ranging delivery by private road transport and chartered railcar. But most journals (11 each morning and 32 each evening) are largely parochial in distribution. However well the eight major metropolitan papers are distributed beyond their own towns, they cannot hope to provide full local news and advertising coverage for the smaller centres through which their transport passes; hence a strong provincial press which in the last few years has become an aggressive factor in newspaper competition for national advertising contracts.