In 1879 there were only 3,543 miles of pole line over which to send telegrams; transmission was manual. (The first telephone exchange was opened in 1881.) The association (with a staff comprising a manager, assistant, and eight paid correspondents) sent 3 million words, costing £6,190, to 48 members. There were 40 words in an average message. The association, which has a staff of 25, now distributes to its members about 17 million words of news annually, divided almost equally between overseas and New Zealand news. Distribution by leased teleprinter network, printing the news directly into newspaper offices, began in 1950. The network has since been duplicated to provide more capacity. For overseas news, the association has worked with the main Australian newspapers and agencies since 1887. Transmission from Australia to New Zealand was entirely by cable until 1954, and for the next 10 years mainly by radio. A great technical advance came in December 1963 with the leasing of facilities on the new Commonwealth Pacific submarine cable. News now pours into the Press Association's Wellington headquarters on reliable circuits which are not subject to sunspot activity or other interference as were the previous radio links. For news photographs as well as for the printed word, the new cable is a great advance in communications. Illustrations of faraway events can be received by New Zealand newspapers with astonishing clarity within two or three hours of their happening.

Before 1887 news was obtained from Reuters, which re-entered the field in 1916. The association has since 1947 been a partner in Reuters and the Reuter Trust. It also has traditional arrangements with the Associated Press of America and with United Press International, the two major American news agencies, and with other news sources.

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

In December 1879 the rival groups combined as the United Press Association. This name remained until 1942 when it was changed to the New Zealand Press Association Ltd., to stress its national scope and character. The association still maintains its original, strictly non-political organisation.

The new association would allow only one morning and evening paper in each centre to subscribe; this left many rivals unserved. Open warfare broke out when the association bought for £1,000 the exclusive lease of a Government wire to transmit news telegrams to members. The rival group, calling themselves the Press Agency, organised under the chairmanship of T. W. Leys, editor of the Auckland Star. After a bitter campaign, in which charges of bribery and corruption were alleged by the Press Agency and repeated in Parliament (they were never proved), the Government capitulated and leased a second wire. Each group tried to outdo the other. Competition was not only intense but expensive to the two groups; the Post Office noted officially that messages duplicated “by two competing press associations for supplying intelligence to newspapers were amongst the chief producers of public dissatisfaction”.

“Greville's Telegram Company, Reuter's Agents” filled a gap until it was taken over by the Press Telegraph Agency, run by a Captain Holt, and a Wellington journalist, Florence M'Carthy. (FitzGerald and Co. were by then defunct.) Greville and his partner, C. O. Montrose, had a contemporary – an association of 13 papers organised by the Otago Daily Times, working before October 1870 and supplying foreign and interprovincial news to its members. Holt and M'Carthy gained a reputation for being “perfunctory and inadequate” and in June 1878 the Otago Daily Times brought most of the papers together with a jointly owned agency called the Press Association. This was formed in December with 27 members.

Telegraph news was first transmitted in Canterbury more than a hundred years ago. In 1859 James Edward FitzGerald, who was Canterbury Agent in London, sent out 20 miles of wire, batteries, insulators, and 250 iron poles for a line to connect Lyttelton with Christchurch. The equipment was set up by George Holmes and Co., of Melbourne, for £1,405; and the line was opened on 1 July 1862. In 1865 the Central Government built an electric telegraph in the South Island. FitzGerald, who owned the Christchurch Press, arranged for his brother Gerard to use the telegraph to transmit the general telegraphic news. In the autumn of that year G. FitzGerald and Co. began operations from Campbelltown, Bluff Harbour, under the name of the New Zealand General Telegraphic Agency. The agency's first news telegram was a summary of news prepared in Melbourne; it arrived in Christchurch on 21 May 1865. The Lyttelton Times and Canterbury Standard joined the Press in receiving the agency's telegrams, with the object of cutting costs and avoiding expensive competition. Five years later Julius Vogel, Colonial Treasurer and Postmaster-General in the Fox Ministry, introduced a free news-wire system for a short time. The Government soon saw a chance of making money from press traffic.

The Press Association of New Zealand, a cooperative of 41 newspapers, runs a highly efficient teleprinter network through which news is transmitted simultaneously to 37 of its members. Each member supplies to the cooperative all local news of national interest for retransmission to other members. Hence the association need employ a staff of only 25, including three full-time overseas correspondents.

Since the early days of New Zealand the Presbyterian Church has displayed an interest in public affairs. Presbyterians have taken a strong stand in the matter of temperance and many have been advocates of total abstinence, 6 o'clock closing of hotel bars, and of total prohibition of the licensed liquor traffic. They have been strongly opposed to the secularising of Sunday and the extension of facilities for gambling. While protesting against social evils, they have not been lacking in positive social concern. In the early days of Otago when an attempt was made to lengthen the hours of labour of the labouring man, the Rev. Thomas Burns stood firm for the principle of the eight-hours' day. When the sweating evil arose in the depression years of the eighties of last century, it was the Rev. Rutherford Waddell, of St. Andrew's Church, Dunedin, and the first president of the Tailoresses' Union of New Zealand, who led a crusade against it. On several occasions during periods of industrial unrest and trade recessions, the General Assembly of the Church has advocated far-reaching social reforms, and in recent years has displayed much interest in the part New Zealand should play in the Community of Nations and particularly in the affairs of South-East Asia.

The denominational paper is the Outlook.

by James David Salmond, O.B.E., M.A., PH.D., formerly Moderator of the Presbyterian Church of New Zealand, Dunedin.

• The History of the Presbyterian Church of New Zealand, Elder, J. R., (1940).

Presbyterians in New Zealand have displayed their Church's traditional concern for education. In the seventies of last century they gave strong support to the establishment of a National System of Public Education, though the exclusion of religious teaching from public schools has had three reactions among Presbyterians – the establishment under Presbyterian auspices of several schools; support of Bible-in-Schools Leagues in their efforts to have the Bible restored to the curriculum of the schools; and support of the New Zealand Council for Christian Education in its efforts to use existing facilities under the Nelson system of voluntary religious instruction, first developed in 1897 in the province of Nelson on the initiative of a Presbyterian minister, the Rev. J. H. McKenzie.

Presbyterians in Otago played a significant part in the founding of the University of Otago (1870), the first University in New Zealand, and in the establishment of residential halls for university students.

In its own work of Christian education the Presbyterian Church has sought to develop its Sunday school and Bible class work on sound educational lines and has endeavoured to learn from the experience of churches overseas. Inspired by the Christian youth movements of the latter part of the nineteenth century, the New Zealand Presbyterian Bible Class Movement, mainly led by lay people, has made a distinctive contribution to Christian work among young people, both in New Zealand and in Australia.

Organised social service work under the auspices of the Presbyterian Church of New Zealand was begun in 1907 with the formation of a Presbyterian Social Service Association and the establishment of an orphanage. Later associations were formed in other centres. While P.S.S.A. work was at first connected largely with the carrying on of orphanages and of work among juvenile offenders in the Law Courts, since 1918, when Ross Home for the aged was opened in Dunedin, 20 similar homes (some with hospitals attached) have been established throughout New Zealand.

In the early years of the Presbyterian Church of New Zealand the settlers depended on the churches of the United Kingdom (particularly Scotland) to provide them with ministers, but before long the necessity of training a New Zealand ministry was recognised. In 1876 a Theological Hall (the first professor being the Rev. William Salmond) was established in Dunedin followed in 1909 by the erection of Knox College (the first master being the Rev. William Hewitson). In addition to providing classroom and library accommodation for the Theological Hall, Knox College furnishes residential quarters and tutorial assistance for university students of all faculties and denominations. In 1903 Deaconess College (for many years known as the Presbyterian Women's Training Institute) was established in Dunedin for the training of women workers for service in New Zealand and overseas.