Journalist Kay Blundell continues a family tradition

Wednesday, 7 January 2015

IT'S in the blood. My great-great grandfather Henry Blundell founded The Evening Post in 1865 and I am proud to continue the family tradition.

My parents were journalists and I grew up with the constant tapping of typewriter keys and the hours of the day punctuated by the sound of pips announcing the Radio New Zealand news.

Pursuing a career in journalism after I left school seemed the natural thing to do.

Studying at Wellington Polytechnic in the 1970s, we were lucky to have Ted Frost, Jim Hartley, Ray Lilley, Michael King and Ross Annabell - all well-known in journalism and literary circles - as tutors. A class reunion decades later revealed all but about four of our class had remained true to the vocation. Our tutors had instilled in us an unquenchable thirst for news.

Continuing the family tradition has been an honour and discovering more about my family, a joy.

I had been working for The Dominion Post for about a year when in February 2005 I wrote an article on the 140th anniversary ofThe Evening Post. Writing the story, I could almost feel my father tapping his pencil beside me.

A photo of Henry Blundell revealed an uncanny resemblance to my father - the dark wavy hair, wide brow, long pointed nose and straight mouth. I felt I had discovered a whole new chapter to my family's history, noticing my sons' likeness to their forebear.

Henry Blundell emigrated from Dublin in 1860 with three sons and three daughters after working for 27 years at the Dublin Evening Mail, lastly as manager, resigning when he disagreed with the paper's policy toward its employees.

The Blundell family had a reputation as kindly, considerate employers through four generations of steering the paper, and the Post was always a family affair, with a close relationship between management and staff.

Blundell Bros Ltd was incorporated in 1897.

In 1972, Blundell Brothers, owner of The Evening Post, merged with Wellington Publishing, the company that owned its morning competitor The Dominion, to form Independent Newspapers.

INL sold the paper and all other New Zealand newspapers and most magazines in its stable to Fairfax in 2003.

My father's career as a journalist began when he was 16 working for The New Zealand Free Lance.

When World War II broke out he joined the New Zealand Army. Sent to the desert in Egypt, he was captured and became a POW, for 3 1/2 years.

Surviving a torturous death march across Germany, my father shared a tartan woollen rug with Eddie Fail from Christchurch which they later swore saved their lives.

The soldiers forged a life-long friendship, cemented further when Eddie moved from Christchurch to Wellington and became a linotype operator for The Evening Post.

After the war dad was commissioned by the government to go to Japan and report on the conditions of the occupying forces.

Former POW and Evening Post cartoonist Nevile Lodge was also a close friend of my father.

The news industry today is changing rapidly, with a fast-growing digital audience playing a bigger role but the essence of news remains the same.

In the first edition of The Evening Post, Henry Blundell wrote, 'the proprietors of The Evening Post are led to hope that the inhabitants of Wellington will hail with pleasure the appearance of a journal devoted to their interests, in which they will endeavour, faithfully and concisely, to narrate various and several political on dits of the day.'