'A light in dark places': The Dominion Post's first two decades
Sunday, 16 April 2023
The Dominion Post hit the streets of Wellington on July 8, 2002. As senior reporter Rachel Thomas noted in July 2022, it had been an interesting 20 years.
Reporter Mark Stevens was on parental leave with his new baby when his boss, Clive Lind, called to say the paper he worked for would be closing in two weeks.
“I remember thinking ‘what am I going to do?’ I have this baby. I can't put it back,” Stevens said.
Lind had been editor of The Evening Post for little more than a month when he made that call in June 2002, meaning his tenure as editor lasted just seven weeks.
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**
He still laughs about how a friend at his former office in Southland rang him to quip, “It didn’t take you long to f… that paper, did it?”
In June 2002 Stuff was still a fledgling news website with a small team of web editors.
But the Internet had already begun gobbling up advertising dollars and with both The Evening Post and its rival, The Dominion, owned by the same company – Independent Newspapers Ltd (INL) – a morning and evening publication was no longer justifiable.
The lead-up to the change had been top secret.
Upper management were convinced advertisers would abandon both papers as soon as they knew of the merger of the titles and feared a potentially crippling strike.
Both Stevens and Lind landed on their feet, but 90 staff and more than 800 contracted deliverers didn’t make it through the redundancies.
Sure enough, on July 8, 2002, The Dominion Post launched its first edition – combining two newsrooms and hundreds of staff.
Over the next 20 years The Dominion Post was at the front of ground-breaking stories. It would expose then-Labour MP Shane Jones’ dodgy credit card spending, reveal fraudulent dealings by Sir Ngatata Love and follow the shooting rampage of convicted murderer Graeme Burton through the foothills of Lower Hutt.
Love would be jailed more than four years after journalist Hamish Rutherford’s first story.
The Dominion Post journalists would be there when a nationwide pandemic began and readers turned to the 1pm press conferences for answers.
They would be there every day of a 23-day occupation at Parliament, as mau whenua camped at Shelly Bay and were there to piece together the fallout of the 2016 Kaikōura quake.
Production editor Kylie Walker had put the paper to bed that night in 2016 and was in the work car park when the magnitude 7.8 earthquake struck at 12.02am.
Readers that day woke to a paper containing early images of the quake and damage. Walker had re-made the front page at 2am.
Eighteen months into the paper’s inception, journalist Philip Kitchin uncovered the story of Louise Nicholas, which carried the headline: “Police raped me”.
It was the result of a two-year investigation, saw people march in the streets in Nicholas’ support, and would lead to a massive inquiry into how police handled sexual assault cases.
Other moments included the unforgettable goal All White Rory Fallon scored in the 2009 World Cup qualifier against Bahrain; a water-logged David Bowie concert in 2004 and the announcement in 2017 that the region would get a new children’s hospital.
There was the night Peter Jackson won 11 Academy Awards and the day Richie McCaw would hoist the Rugby World Cup high after the touch-and-go win against France in 2011.
In April 2022, then editor Anna Fifield would put the C-word on the front page. The story was about the rising vitriol and abuse directed at female politicians.
“[I]magine you are pelted with this word multiple times a day – on your social media, in your inbox,” Fifield wrote in an accompanying editor’s note. No subscribers cancelled.
Former editor Eric Janssen (2018-2020) recalls the “phenomenal support” from readers when the paper was printed with a new Māori masthead, gifted by Taranaki Whānui and Ngāti Toa.
It was June 2018 when the paper was first printed under the masthead Te Pūrongo o te Upoko-o-te-Ika, which translates loosely as “the report from the head of the fish” – (in Māori legend, Wellington is the head of the giant fish hooked by Māui and his brothers).
“Unsurprisingly, there were also a few dinosaurs,” Janssen said. “From memory, eight subscribers cancelled, saying they did not want ‘Māori in their newspaper’.”
There was no point in holding back in the response, he figured as he wrote back. “No editor likes losing subscribers, but in your case I consider it a win-win. We’ll process your refund ASAP.”
In November 2020, the words “Nō mātou te hē – we are sorry” would be spread across the cover, an apology for racist coverage that reinforced a Eurocentric narrative.
Fifield said the commitment to better represent Māori voices was ongoing and editorial staff were now better armed with knowledge of Māori tīkanga, te reo Māori, and relationships with local iwi.
In May 2022, kaumātua and rōpu from Te Ati Awa Taranaki Whānui blessed Stuff and The Dominion Post’s new offices with karakia and waiata, and gifted the name Ngā Pānui.
The name references puna o te kī – a spring of profound words, puna mātauranga – a pool of knowledge and puna kōrero – a pool of speakers.
Caitlin Cherry was appointed editor on December 15, 2022.
She had worked as a journalist, producer and senior news leader at RNZ for more than 20 years and more recently was Head of Content at Consumer NZ.
The Dominion Post, which will become The Post from the end of this month, is a finalist in the Metropolitan Newspaper of the Year category at this year’s Voyager Media Awards.
The Dominion Post editors: Richard Long (2002), Tim Pankhurst (2002 to 2009), Bernadette Courtney (2009 to 2018), Eric Janssen (2018 to 2020), Anna Fifield (2020 to 2022).
– With additional reporting by Nicholas Boyack.