Maori newspapers struggle to survive

By VANESSA BIDOIS

Whare Akuhata is far from a bigspending media mogul. The co-editor of Whakatane iwi newspaper Pu Kaea is ringing around the tribal traps to scrape together enough cash to pay this month's phone bill.

Financial pressures have forced the eight-year-old paper to cease publishing - at least for a few months.

Of the more than a dozen Maori newspapers and magazines in the golden days of the early 1990s, only a handful have managed to stay in business.

They include Pu Kaea, Rotorua's Pikiao Panui and Mana magazine edited by Derek Fox.

Another national magazine, TU mai, was launched a year ago.

Mr Akuhata, who hopes to raise more than $60,000 to keep Pu Kaea afloat, says most of the failed iwi newspapers lacked capital, resources, skilled staff and a supportive base.

He challenges the Government to honour its pledge to "close the gaps" by taking a key role in fostering the few Maori publications that are left.

"Te Puni Kokiri [the Ministry of Maori Development] can be said to be actually stifling the development of Maori print media," Mr Akuhata says. "The free distribution of 50,000 copies of Kokiri Paetae has a detrimental effect on all Maori publications."

TU mai editor Ata Putaranui admits that Maori print workers envy their colleagues in radio and television who receive some funding from the Government.

"Maori publications struggle to carry out the work involved in publishing as well as manage overall viability as a business," she says.

"To receive some form of financial recognition for the integral role we play in Maori development would not only be extremely useful, but likely to help us develop more."

Sue Sarich, former editor of the popular Maniapoto tribal paper Kia Hiwa Ra, which folded in 1997, says Maori publications cannot afford the research needed to prove readership numbers.

"You are telling advertisers that one copy of Kia Hiwa Ra would have been read by three or four people, but you cannot back it up with statistical information," she says.

"Therefore they are reluctant to advertise.

"That is one of the biggest problems for Maori publications."

Ana Tapiata, the Maori representative on the New Zealand Journalist Training Organisation, says she hopes the Waiariki Polytechnic course in Rotorua for aspiring Maori journalists will be resurrected this year.

A national survey in 1994 showed that only 4 per cent of journalists were Maori, but Ana Tapiata suggests that figure may have dropped even further.

"With such a vacuum, the role of iwi newspapers and iwi radio stations becomes extremely important," she says.

"They are one of the few places where positive Maori images can be seen."

Such media were essential not only to the development of Maori, "but also to New Zealand society if we are to grow as a bicultural, let alone a multicultural, nation."