The Press

The 14 July 2023 front page of The Press
Type	Daily newspaper
Format	Compact (weekday) Broadsheet (Saturday)
Owner	Stuff Ltd
Editor	Kamala Hayman
Founded	25 May 1861
Headquarters	Christchurch, New Zealand
Circulation	37,002 (as of 2019)[1]
ISSN	0113-9762
Website	thepress.co.nz

The Press (Māori:Te Matatika) is a daily newspaper published inChristchurch, New Zealand, owned by media businessStuff Ltd. First published in 1861, the newspaper is the largest circulating daily in the South Island and publishes Monday to Saturday. One community newspaper—Northern Outlook—is also published byThe Press and is free.

The newspaper has won the title of New Zealand Newspaper of the Year (in its circulation category) three times: in 2006, 2007 and 2012. It has also won the overall Newspaper of the Year title twice: in 2006 and 2007.^[2][3][4]

James FitzGerald came toLyttelton on theCharlotte Jane in December 1850, and was from January 1851 the first editor of theLyttelton Times,Canterbury's first newspaper.^[5] From 1853, he focussed on politics and withdrew from theLyttelton Times.^[6] After several years in England, he returned to Canterbury concerned about the proposed capital works programme of the provincial government, with his chief concern theproposed rail tunnel connectingChristchurch and Lyttelton, which he thought of as fiscally irresponsible, but supported by his old newspaper, theLyttelton Times. The newspaper's editor,Crosbie Ward, made an imputation of unknown content, and this spurred FitzGerald to set upThe Press as a rival newspaper.^[7]

FitzGerald had dinner withJohn Watts-Russell, who put up £500 on the condition that FitzGerald would be in charge of the new newspaper. Next, he enlisted the support of the Rev. John Raven, who organised many of the practical aspects, like organising a printer and a printing press. Other members of the early committee that organisedThe Press were Henry Porcher Lance (brother ofJames Dupré Lance),^[8]Henry Tancred, andRichard J. S. Harman; all of them were colonial gentry.^[9]

The Press was first published on 25 May 1861 from a small cottage, making it the oldest surviving newspaper in theSouth Island of New Zealand. The cottage belonged to Raven on land known as Raven's paddock on the west side of Montreal Street, between Worcester and Gloucester Streets, opposite the present-dayChristchurch Art Gallery.^[10] The first edition was a six-page tabloid and was sold for sixpence. The paper continued as a weekly. The public saw FitzGerald as the proprietor ofThe Press, but the newspaper saw reason to publicly state that "it is not a fact that Mr FitzGerald has either pecuniary or official connexion" with it; he was however the driving force behind the paper.^[10]

On 13 June 1863, the first part ofSamuel Butler'sErewhon appeared inThe Press in an article signed with the pseudonymCellarius (q.v.) and headed "Darwin among the Machines."^[11]

In 1905,The Press purchased a block of the Cathedral Square site for £4,000. The Board then purchased the right of way (Press Lane) and what was going to be the original Theatre Royal site from the Theatre Royal Syndicate for £5000. The Gothic part of thePress building (occupied by the company until 22 February 2011) was built starting in 1907 and the Press staff shifted into it in February 1909 from their Cashel Street premises.

In the 1930s,The Press began to seek solutions to the slow delivery times of the newspaper to theWest Coast. Roads at the time were difficult, and theNew Zealand Railways Department was unwilling to reschedule any of its ordinary passenger trains to operate at the early morning times desired byThe Press as patronage would have been uneconomic, and freight trains did not provide a desirable measure of swiftness. Accordingly,The Press was willing to subsidise the construction and operation of two smallLeyland dieselrailbuses to carry the newspapers by rail at a desirable time. These little railbuses began service on 3 August 1936 and left Christchurch at 2:20 am, travelling down theMidland Line to reachGreymouth at 6:40 am and then continue along theRoss Branch as far asHokitika, arriving just before 8:00 am. This provided substantially quicker delivery of the newspaper than was previously possible. However, these railbuses were intended to only be a temporary measure and they were replaced by the much largerVulcan railcars as soon as they arrived in New Zealand in the early 1940s.

In 1995,The Press was the country's first news outlet that established a website for news. In 2000,Independent Newspapers Ltd (INL) launched its news website branded asStuff and from then on,The Press and Stuff worked on online content collaboratively.^[12]

In February 2011,The Press main building in central Christchurch was badly damaged in the2011 Christchurch earthquake. All production was operated from their printing plant near Christchurch Airport until June 2012, when the central Christchurch building was partially rebuilt and upgraded. It was one of the first buildings in the Christchurch CBD to be rebuilt and operational.

The paper format for the weekday editions changed frombroadsheet tocompact in 2018, with only the Saturday edition retaining the larger format.^[13]

On 27 April 2023, it was announced that the newspaper would launch a new website that would new be subscription based, this would also happen to other Stuff Inc. owned newspapersThe Post andWaikato Times.^[14] On 29 April, the new website was launched which also featured a new logo for the newspaper and all content now paywalled.^[15]

The old motto on the masthead – "Nihil utile quod non-honestum" translates to "Nothing is useful that is not honest." LikeThe Age in Australia, the newspaper's masthead featured theRoyal Arms.

The early ownership, beyond the newspaper having been financed by Watts-Russell, is unclear. In February 1862, an attempt was made to form a company and formalise the ownership of the paper. A deed of association for "The Proprietors of The Press" was drafted, and it lists the five members of the previous committee (Watts-Russell, Raven, Lance, Tancred, and Harman), plus five new members:Alfred Richard Creyke,John Hall,Joseph Brittan,Isaac Cookson, and James Somerville Turnbull.^[16] The deed was not executed, but four-month later, FitzGerald, who had no funds, was the sole owner "through the liberality of the proprietors", as he called it later.^[17] FitzGerald lost control of the newspaper ownership in 1868 and the Press Company was incorporated as the owner. That company was dissolved in 1890 andGeorge Stead bought the assets. Stead established the Christchurch Press Company and became its chairman.^[18][19]

The Christchurch Press Company was sold to Independent Newspapers Ltd in 1987, and INL in turn was bought by Fairfax New Zealand in 2003.^[12] The Australian parent company,Fairfax Media, merged withNine Entertainment Co. in December 2018.

The following have been editors ofThe Press:^[20]

Name	Portrait	Term of office
George Sale		1861
Joseph Colborne-Veel		1861	1868
Charles Purnell[21]		1868
Joseph Colborne-Veel		1868	1878
John Steele Guthrie		1878	1894
Michael Cormac Keane		1894	1919
William Triggs		1919	1929
Oliver Duff		1929	1932
Pierce Hugo Napier Freeth		1932	1957
Arthur Rolleston Cant		1957	1973
Norman Macbeth		1973	1978
Binney Lock[22]		1978	1990
David Wilson		1990	1997
Bruce Baskett		1997
Tim Pankhurst[23]		1997	2001
Paul Thompson[24]		2001	2007
Andrew Holden[25]		2007	2012
Joanna Norris		2012	2017
Kamala Hayman		2017	present

• The Press, 1861–1961; the Story of a Newspaper.Christchurch: Christchurch Press Company. 1963.
• Scholefield, Guy, ed. (1940).A Dictionary of New Zealand Biography : M–Addenda(PDF). Vol. II. Wellington:Department of Internal Affairs. Retrieved18 January 2014.
• Crean, Mike (2011).The Press: first with the news: an illustrated history. Auckland: Random House NZ.ISBN 978-1869795627.

• Official website
• The Press atPapers Past (archive from 1861 to 1989)
• Today'sThe Press front page at theFreedom Forum website

• Newspapers published in New Zealand
• Newspapers established in 1861
• Stuff (company)
• Mass media in Christchurch
• History of Christchurch
• 1861 establishments in New Zealand

• Articles with short description
• Short description matches Wikidata
• Use New Zealand English from August 2024
• All Wikipedia articles written in New Zealand English
• Use dmy dates from January 2019
• Articles containing Māori-language text
• Official website different in Wikidata and Wikipedia