36 LISTENER NOVEMBER 5 2016
In comparison, the newspapers of a cen-
tury ago may seem dustily indigestible. But
the recent availability of digital editions of
the Sun, a feisty, pioneering daily, shows sto-
ries that would hold their own as clickbait
today. In 1914, the Sun quickly conquered
Christchurch’s evening newspaper market.
Then it took on Auckland, walking into one
of this country’s fiercest newspaper wars.
By the time these inky skirmishes ended,
the media landscape was transformed. A
once dull and complacent industry was pro-
ducing lively, brightly presented papers that
resonated with readers’ daily lives.
With its liberal use of news pictures and
bright layout, the Sun acknowledged its debt
to the populist Daily Mail, the first British
paper to boast a million readers. Sydney
weekly Truth, which launched a “Maori-
land” edition in 1905, was an obvious,
less-respectable, influence.
Behind the enterprise was a pushy youngAustralian named Ted Huie. Until 1912, he
had edited the Evening News, produced by
the Christchurch Press. In all its editions,
the Press buried the news of the day beneath
pages of classified advertisements.
By the turn of the 20th century, high-speed rotary printing had paved the way
for pages featuring photographs and illustra-
tions. But daily metropolitan newspapers in
New Zealand, as elsewhere, took themselves
so seriously that pictures of any sort were
frowned on as frivolous and undignified.
Big papers such as the Press had little incen-tive to change. Technological breakthroughs
of the latter 19th century – telegraph, rail-
ways and submarine cable – guaranteed their
prosperity. All belonged to a national agency
that shared wire news, and all were content
to present the same news in the same boring
way. The Sun would change all that.
HERITAGE
Papers chased scoops in the mysterious
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In February 1914, Huie launched his paper
into a market dominated by the Evening
News and the rival Christchurch Star, owned
by the Lyttelton Times. His backers, includ-
ing political heavyweights, sunk close to
$12 million in today’s dollars into it.
Huie’s Sun was full of bright and populist
headlines, highly literate and targeted at
female readers. Importantly, photographs
and illustrations were sprinkled through its
pages. According to the Press history, the
new paper “caused something of a sensa-
tion among the public and in the industry
... [the Sun] quickly gathered a substantial
circulation and advertising support”.
But it was the elegantly written and,
above all, local content that made the Sun
such an innovator. Writer Robin Hyde, a
sometime staff member, wrote: “All Sun
reporters were ‘bush-rangers’ – wandering
hither and thither to pick up local inci-dent, tint with local colour and present in
‘snappy’ style.”
These were the stories that struck
common chords a century ago, getting
people talking over the back fences, in the
pub or at the butcher’s shop.
The inaugural edition cele brated the “seat-
warmers” of Cathedral Square: “The old men
sit in the shade or in the dappled sunlight
that filters through the trees. All day they sit
there, and across the space of asphalt stare at
the United Service Hotel, and the buildings
beside it ... they are of the hopeless type;
not colonial, though they may be, but men
who have lost keenness in the fight, and are
content to be discontent and will sit there
until the twilight. Presently they will amble
off to a home somewhere, and the next day
they will be on the seats again.”
Six months after the paper’s launch,
war in Europe was declared. Demand for
news soared, and like other newspapers,
the Sun published special war editions.
Here, as elsewhere, this would be a warcommunicated in the written word – this
was the last great world event wholly cov-
ered in print.
Like more established papers, the Sun
would struggle with the cumbersome mili-
tary news censorship regime. Days after war
began, the censor accused Huie of publish-
ing a “dangerous article” when the Sun
innocently quantified numbers of departing
soldiers. Huie called the rules “uncalled for”
but promised to co-operate.
The “bush-rangers” of the Sun were often
in trouble. On one occasion, the Governor
(later Governor-General), Lord Liverpool,
dressed down a reporter spotted taking
notes at a Christchurch military parade. His
salty retort – “Why the hell are you here?
Damn it, by what right?” – gained national
attention. Language of this kind was not
expected from the Queen’s representa-
tive. The Governor’s ill-considered remarks
ended up in print, and today it is easy to
imagine news of this kind going viral.
The exhaustive newsgathering paid off;
the paper soon outstripped its rivals. Three
years after the launch of the Sun, the Press
abandoned its evening edition and the Sun’s
circulation was twice that of the Star. The
Sun tightened its profitable grip, introducing
literary competitions and publishing sleek
weekend supplements.HEAD TO HEAD
Could the upstart repeat its success in Auck-
land? In 1925, Huie persuaded his directors
to go head-to-head with the established,
deep-pocketed evening Auckland Star. He
invested heavily: a substantial building on
the corner of Wyndham and Albert Sts,
topped off with the crest of a risen sun, soon
housed a large reporting staff and printing
presses. The timing was not good. Print’s
domination of the media was ending by the
mid-1920s, as the first public radio broad-
casts crackled out of stations in Dunedin,
then Auckland. The Wall Street sharemarket
crash was just a few years away.
The Auckland Sun nevertheless launched
in style in March 1927, as 400 invited guests
danced on the editorial floor to a string
quartet. With its elegant layout, page one
news and crisp use of photographs, the
paper appeared to exemplify a booming,
sophisticated metropolis. Sales soon topped
30,000 copies on a Saturday.
In his book Confessions of a Journalist,
writer Pat Lawlor recalled: “For the first time
in its history, Auckland has a truly modern
paper with a front page presentation of news“All Sun reporters
were ‘bush-rangers’ –
wandering hither and
thither to pick up local
incident, and present in
‘snappy’ style.”