It's good to be back

Voluntary redundancy - after 24 years - will give Joanne Nattrass the chance to hone her vegetable preserving skills. Picture / File

We're probably still known to many as the local rag, although it's been a wee while since we heard two minutes' silence, but if anything good has come out of Covid-19 for the Northland Age it is the overwhelming support that was shown when we ceased publishing.

This is the first edition since March 26, and for a while it seemed distinctly possible that that would be the last edition ever.

We have maintained our website and Facebook pages throughout the lockdown, with huge assistance from the Northern Advocate, but that is a poor substitute for publishing twice a week, as we have been doing for the last 116 years, and the possibility that we would never publish again generated calls from all quarters for the government to reverse its decision to declare non-daily newspapers non-essential. It did that, four days later, leaving the ball in NZME's court.

The Free Speech Coalition was very quick to defend non-dailies, and within hours of the Ministry of Culture and Heritage's decision that we weren't needed began preparing to launch an urgent judicial review, spokesman Jordan Williams saying the High Court would not uphold a bureaucrat deciding what media could and could not operate.

"Even at a time of emergency, no civilised society can justify the government deciding what parts of the media are important and not important. The maxim 'this is a dangerous precedent' is overused, but in this case, it literally is. Ethnic media, which have now been banned from publishing, reach audiences that the daily press does not. Similarly, in smaller or aged communities where online access is limited, local information is absolutely essential ... ," he said.

"Even at times of war censorship, the government didn't choose who could print and who couldn't."

Fair comment, which might well have contributed to the reversal of the ministry's decision, which quite frankly made no sense at all, but that was only the start of the battle. The fact is that the level 4 lockdown has been as tough for the media as it has for most other businesses, particularly print, and even more particularly for local newspapers.

NZME has made a heroic effort to keep calm and carry on, albeit while reducing costs on a grand scale, and it deserves this community's gratitude for that. A lot of people in this industry have paid for this crisis with their careers, however, and the Northland Age has not been spared. Manager Joanne Nattrass (who for some years has been yearning to branch out into preserving vegetables) has taken voluntary redundancy after 24 years, the position in reception has been disestablished, and so has Frank Malley's sports reporting role.

That leaves a staff of two, one in editorial and one in advertising. Hopefully the economic recovery we are all hoping for will restore our fortunes to pre-coronavirus levels, but for now we should be grateful that Te Hiku still has a newspaper at all. We at least have no doubt that the Age is valued, in a community where for many it remains the main source of information, and if it's a little soon to start popping corks, hopefully it will survive this crisis.

This pandemic has been especially unkind to Frank Malley though. He joined the Age shortly before completing his journalism diploma, in 2003, and has been a good and faithful servant ever since. He had a hard act to follow in Ted Bagshaw, who until he retired in 1995 had covered sport, served as our photographer, a linotype operator and physically put the paper together for many years, gaining near-legendary status.

The eight years between Ted's retirement and Frank's arrival saw a number of people take on the sport reporting job, some lasting longer than others, some showing more ability and enthusiasm than others, but none came close to genuinely succeeding Ted.

Then Frank arrived, after management appealed to journalism schools around the country to nominate likely candidates. Sport would not have been his first choice, and it would be fair to say there was something of a settling in period, but Frank took to it with a degree of enthusiasm and dedication that has never diminished.

Under his watch Northland Age sport expanded significantly to include all sorts of previously ignored codes, and he earned the appreciation of many for whom he worked so hard.

One day, surely, this pandemic will be behind us and sport will resume, but no one knows just what the future will bring. The immediate job is to resume publishing, and to hope for the best.

For now we must be grateful to NZME for keeping the faith through an extraordinarily difficult time, to those who rushed to our defence when our future seemed to be in real doubt, and to the advertisers who are sticking with us.

There will be some who won't be happy to see us back. Responses to the news that we might not publish again included one amounting to "Good riddance," while we have been accused of supporting that well known communist newspaper the NZ Herald, and of being controlled by Hone Harawira. That makes a change from the occasional accusation in times past of being in the pocket of the National Party, the 'alt right,' and/or the Far North District Council.

Well, it's a free world. For the moment at least. And no one benefits from excessive adulation.

We are by no means out of the woods yet, however. Just how much damage this virus has done in Te Hiku remains to be seen. Perhaps the extent of that damage will begin to emerge now that the lockdown has been eased a little, and for some life will begin returning to something vaguely approaching normal.

In the meantime, each and every one of us has a role to play in restoring our economy and the jobs and livelihoods that depend upon it. Like never before, this is a time to shop locally. Online sources might be cheaper and offer greater variety, but it is our business people who employ Far Northerners, who support Far North charities and causes, and it is they who depend now more than ever upon our custom.

Every time you spend a dollar, please, spend it where it can help our recovery. Spend it where it will help keep someone in a job, where will circulate within this community. Show your gratitude for the fact that many local businesses have hung in there throughout this crisis by patronising them, without physical contact, of course.

No one really knows what the post-Covid-19 Far North, or world for that matter, is going to look like, but it seems to be generally accepted that it will never again be quite what it was before March 2020. Some changes might well be for the better, but some may not. Doing business in a community like Te Hiku can be tough at the best of times, and the best of times these are not. It is time for us to pull together, not just to conquer this virus but to preserve as much as we can of the way of life that the Far North provides. We will not do that by putting our future in the hands of distant online retailers and courier companies.

And apologies in advance to those who find that the Age doesn't look quite like it did a month ago. We, and others, are working hard to retain as much as we can, but we cannot simply return to how things used to be. One day, perhaps. For the time being, let's just be grateful that there seems to be light at the end of the tunnel.