Manawatū Guardian was first printed in June 21, 1952.
THREE KEY FACTS
- NZ Herald publisher NZME is proposing to close 14 community newspapers, with the loss of about 30 jobs
- The first edition of Manawatū Guardian was June 21, 1952
Dave Mollard is a Palmerston North community worker and social commentator
OPINION
For more than 52 years, on most Thursdays, the Manawatū Guardian has been delivered free of charge to letterboxes throughout our city.
It is tabloid size but is far from being the sleaze merchants we associate with that format - the closest thing we have had to a page 3 girl was winner of the “Best Heifer” award at the local A&P Show.
Over the years the Guardian has been full of information about the recent church hall opening, the retiring school principal, the local amateur production of Grease and of course the best advice for growing potatoes.
The hardest-hitting stories involved the lack of bus stops on our streets, the potholes on our roads and how much our mayor gets paid.
The Guardian didn’t even delve too deeply into the world of sports as back then we had a whole paper, the Manawatū Sports News, dedicated to local code and horse racing. The “spot the ball” contest was a favourite in our family.
Local businesses would advertise their specials on vacuum cleaners, used cars, daffodil bulbs and walk shorts and near the back page there was a coupon to cut out to get 12 cents off a bag of Watties peas from Mackenzies Supermarket on Church St.
The Odeon, The Regent and The State theatres listed the two movies each of them were playing this month, and at election time, both our political parties would splurge on a half page of propaganda, below the fold on the right hand side.
If we missed the Guardian for some reason, we only had to wait a few days until its arch-rival, the Tribune, was stuffed free of charge into our letterbox by a 12-year-old on their Raleigh 20 bike as they earned $2.50 an hour to save up for some roller skates from L & D Sports.
Little old Palmy with a population of almost 60,000 people had two free community newspapers, a sports paper and the broadsheet Evening Standard, which was delivered to your letterbox for the princely sum of 40 cents a day, six days a week.
The economic model of all these newspapers was based on attracting eyeballs which in turn attracted advertising. Broadway and Rangitīkei avenues were full of locally owned retailers desperate to attract your attention and empty your wallets through local printed black and white advertising.
NZME, the owner of the Manawatū Guardian, has announced a proposal to close our last community paper.
Who do we blame for this potential tragedy?
It wasn’t the NZME shareholders that stopped their personal subscription to newspapers, that stopped buying their LPs from Mango Records, their cricket balls from Tisdalls, their whisky from Barnard and Abrahams and their pork sausages from Prestons.
It was us.
Probably, instead of blaming anyone, we just need to remember that the only constant is change.
Andy Stewart pushed on with his motorbike trek despite his growing pain.