READER REPORT:
My evolving love for newspapers
GERARD O'NEIL 01/06/2015
FAIRFAX NZ
Gerard O'Neil's father used to get up at 5am and have a quick look at The Press before milking the cows.
FAIRFAX NZ
News media has changed dramatically since the day of the paper boy
Our family has always had a close relationship with newspapers.
In the 1960s, when my parents were farming at Te Taho, in South Westland, my father would get up at 5am and head off to the front gate to collect The Press.
The Press had begun its journey the previous evening on the overnight railcar to Greymouth. When it arrived in Greymouth it was picked up by a road services bus to be taken to Hokitika, where it was transferred to a bus heading to Franz Joseph.
While drinking an early morning cup of tea, my father would giveThe Press a quick once over, and then head out to milk his cows.
At breakfast, he would read a little more but in reality only had a chance to read it thoroughly after the evening milking.
At a time when television reception was so bad you covered the television screen with blue cellophane to try to decrease the static, and more often than not you listened to Sydney radio stations because their signal was stronger than any you could pick up from New Zealand stations, The Press was a lifeline in terms of keeping one informed.
Once read, The Press had other functions. It was used to wrap kitchen waste, light fires, and clean windows after being soaked in cold tea. It was used by school children for all sorts of art activities and last, but not least, bundled up and delivered to the fish and chip shop in Whataroa to be recycled as packaging.
In the early 1970s, my mother became the Whataroa reporter for the Hokitika Guardian. Her reports were about community activities and events.
Big news stories were things like the time a local shot three ducks with one bullet (in fact my cousin, but he was not named as he did not have a gun licence), a lonely deer appearing in someone's dairy herd, or the big run of whitebait on the Whataroa River which caught everyone napping and meant gumboots had to be used to store them.
When my parents moved to Blenheim, my mother got a part-time job at the Marlborough Express. I often visited her there and got to know many of the reporters and photographers well. There was always a sense of tension and urgency until the edition was closed.
When the big printing press started the whole building would begin shaking, but it meant that soon we paper boys and girls would be on our bikes heading out to deliver our precious cargo in return for $4 per week.
During the past 30 years, the print media in New Zealand (and other countries) has been subject to huge changes.
In New Zealand, these changes probably began with the introduction of the Teletext channel in 1984. Initially introduced to provide news and information updates for the deaf, it was soon being used by many of us to keep informed electronically.
Then along came the internet.
My brother is the chief journalist for a specialised industry magazine in Australia. His employer has been bought and amalgamated so many times over the past 10 years I have lost count. In his last email he lamented his total lack of job security, mentioning that in the past two years, half his colleagues had been made redundant.
At the same time the internet is making traditional journalism obsolete. It has opened the door for thousands of amateur unpaid journalists and writers like me.
The internet has allowed me to carve out a living by combining a number of professions. As a translator, market researcher, business consultant and teacher, I use the material I produce for free in a way that indirectly generates revenue.
Stuff Nation has published about 30 of my stories to date and those articles form part of my writing CV, which I show to my clients.
I personally continue to be thrilled every time I see something I have written in print, not because of what I have written, but because of the discussion and exchange of ideas the articles generate.
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