Newspapers mapped out

Note: The following article discusses Auckland regional newspapers family trees (LHE-062), a new resource available on Kura Heritage Collections Online.

Have you ever wondered: what are the relationships between all these Auckland newspapers? It was an unexpected question I asked myself about a year ago when I found myself utterly baffled by the shelves full of a dozen different Courier newspaper titles in the stack at Manukau Library. In January 2024, all I knew were that there were four Courier newspapers circulating in East and South Auckland: the Manukau Courier, Eastern Courier, East & Bays Courier, and Papakura Courier. Not for a moment did I consider that a complex web of editorial decisions over fifty years had led to these four newspapers existing at this single point in time. Indeed, at one point in the past there was only one Courier—the South Auckland Courier—and at a later point there were six! Thus began my quest to make sense of the Auckland’s hundreds of newspapers.

Image: The reading and newspaper room at Leys Institute, 1939. Auckland Libraries Heritage Collections 850-01.

 Using family trees to demonstrate relationships between newspapers seemed like an appropriate format to achieve my goal, and it was not without precedent. Bruce Ringer, the former team leader at Research Manukau, created a Family Tree of the South Auckland Courier, which was conveniently posted at the end of a row of Courier shelves when I worked out of that office. In the weeks after I first encountered the tree, Ringer and the staff at Research Manukau provided me with slightly more updated editions, as well as an annotated list of all South Auckland newspapers and a collection of anecdotes and comments by a few editors relating to the histories of former local newspapers. By this point, I was entranced.

Image: Bruce Ringer’s Family Tree of the South Auckland Courier, 1993.

Beginning with Ringer’s excellent colour-coded genealogy, I began working on a new edition that focused not on geography, as his did, but on publishers, which I feel would be more useful in identifying connections. My initial research revealed quickly that most community and suburban newspapers throughout Tāmaki Makaurau had been published by the Auckland Star’s owner, New Zealand Newspapers Ltd (now Stuff Ltd), or one of its many subsidiaries. Wilson & Horton, publishers of the New Zealand Herald, also owned several newspapers over the years, and I discovered other prolific publishers through the course of my research. Initially I paid little attention to geography as I began plotting out the whakapapa of the newspapers, but gradually I divided the genealogy into charts that roughly corresponded with Auckland’s geography, though there were and remain many outliers.

Rather than start with the already-documented Courier newspapers, I went to Research Waitākere in Henderson to chart its poorly recorded newspapers. This revealed the interesting publishing histories of Noel Roseman’s Suburban Publishers Ltd (see my article ‘The Voice of Suburban Auckland’, March 2025) and the more mysterious District Newspapers Ltd, which together controlled nearly all newspapers from Titirangi to Ponsonby. District Newspapers eventually sold to New Zealand Newspapers Ltd, leading to the creation of the Western Leader, into which Roseman’s several titles eventually merged. But Roseman also brought me back to the Courier through one of his company’s titles: Papakura’s Ribbon News-Pictorial. This newspaper merged into the News Advertiser in 1969, itself a New Zealand Newspapers Ltd-owned Papakura and Manurewa newspaper that absorbed the Franklin Times in 1971 and eventually became the Papakura Courier in 1992. 

By the middle of 2025, it became clear to me that the relationships between these newspapers was far more complex than I had imagined. The Couriers in particular continued to vex me with their constant name changes, regional variations, endless mergers and spinoffs, and a truly baffling numerical sequence that was almost certainly the result of a raucous weekend in the late 1970s.

Image: An early draft of a chart showing the relationships between West and Central Auckland newspapers. 

Other patterns also began to reveal themselves. One shock was that the term ‘Central Auckland’ did not refer to the central business district, but rather to the communities from Avondale and Blockhouse Bay to Grey Lynn and Onehunga. Surprisingly, the CBD has not had its own newspaper for a very long time, the last attempt ending in 2000 with the collapse of the short-lived Auckland City News. The Auckland City Harbour News, begun in 1985, focused on Central Auckland and did not generally cover the CBD. The Central Leader also avoided the CBD. When it began in 1970, it circulated primarily in Mount Albert and Point Chevalier. But when its companion Southern Leader failed to find an audience, it merged into the Central Leader in August 1971 and pulled the title further south, with Mount Roskill and Onehunga becoming more the focus. Central news coverage was handed to the City and West End News, an independent publication that ceased in 1978. 

On the North Shore, the newspapers proved less surprising. Sure, there were mergers and title changes, but the area was relatively quiet regarding newspaper genealogies. There really were just two: the North Shore Times and the Shore News, both of which had several mergers and spin-offs. The bigger story was further north with the Rodney Times. Over its 124-year-long history—the longest of any of Auckland’s community newspapers—the Times absorbed almost all of its rivals and then spun off a truly staggering number of newspaper and magazine titles, often through ambiguously named subsidiaries. The New Zealand Companies Register and I became quick friends when researching this megacorp.

 

Image: PapersPast ‘Explore’ page for The Rodney & Otamatea Times, Waitemata & Kaipara Gazette.

The Companies Register was not my only source used when researching the information contained in these charts. Ross Harvey’s Union List of Newspapers (1987) proved very helpful early on, as did the author himself, who provided me with general post office registers and other material to aid in my research. The National Library’s database and PapersPast’s digitised newspapers and background summaries provided much of the base material for these genealogies. And staff at Heritage Collections and Auckland Libraries’ research centres have provided continuous help and feedback. Ultimately, though, nothing has been more important than consulting the newspapers themselves—checking their mastheads, first and last issues, and publication sections.

With the last parts of Auckland covered, I initially planned to hang up my hat and call it a day, content that the genealogies of Auckland’s many newspapers were finally charted to my satisfaction. Except I wasn’t satisfied. Although the family trees covered Tāmaki Makaurau, they left out several titles held in Heritage Collections, especially those in Northland. I decided to expand north, adding genealogies for the Northland Times, The Bay Chronicle, The Northern Advocate, Whangarei Report, and Northland Age. By the end, two more charts and several dozen more titles had been added.

Image: Chart showing the genealogy of NZ Farmer and its various title changes and mergers.

 

Next came the issue of magazines: they may not be newspapers but they are still important to Auckland’s newspaper history! Rather than derail the entire premise of my newspaper whakapapa, I decided to add magazines as an appendix to the document. Two major magazine family trees quickly made themselves known: the New Zealand Illustrated Sporting and Dramatic Review and NZFarmer. Both had immediate relevance—the former had just been added to PapersPast and the latter is scheduled for the near future. Other interesting magazines also had their genealogies included, such as New Zealand Listener and Pīpīwharauroa.

The mandatory inclusion of the former Franklin County’s newspapers, which was split between Auckland and the Waikato in 2010, led me to expand the genealogy further south, to the old Auckland provincial boundary. Prior to 1876, the Province of Auckland once went as far south as the top of Hawkes Bay and Waitomo. Thus, I diligently added more charts for Waikato, the King Country, the Bay of Plenty, and Gisborne. It was a somewhat unexpected expansion composed almost entirely of newspapers not held by Auckland Libraries and, in quite a few cases, completely lost to time. Yet these newspapers encompass the maximum extent of Auckland’s historic reach, as many of these titles were founded by Aucklanders or connected to Auckland newspapers in various ways.

 

Image: 10B – Waikato Newspapers, Part 2 chart, showing The Thames Star and Hauraki Plains Gazette genealogies, as well as other Waikato titles.

Throughout the process of compiling these 25 charts, it became abundantly clear to me that the story of Auckland’s newspapers—and New Zealand’s newspapers in general—is rapidly coming to an end. For every newspaper that remains in print, there are three or four family trees that have been pruned. The legacy of these newspapers is contained not just in their archived issues, held at libraries, museums, and other repositories throughout New Zealand, but in their whakapapa, which shows deep connections between businesses and the communities where their publications circulated.

These charts document over 780 individual titles covering the upper half of the North Island. And those are only titles that have direct relationships to at least one other title! The genealogies are not complete—there are doubtless more titles that could be added that are just unknown or have been largely forgotten. There are also missing dates, uncertain relationships, ambiguous ownership, and other questions that still need answering. Because of this, these charts will continue to be updated as new information is revealed.

Auckland regional newspapers family trees are available online now! Use them in your research and follow the links to find newspapers on PapersPast or from Auckland Council Libraries’ collection. If you have any information that can help fill in a blank, confirm or reject a connection, or add another piece to the puzzle, please feel free to comment on the Kura record or email libraryresearch@aucklandcouncil.govt.nz. Help us complete the puzzle of Auckland’s newspapers (and magazines)!

Author: Derek R. Whaley, Heritage Collection Management Lead