Extra! Extra! How the People Made the News: Paperback

(Paperback)

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From the nineteenth-century rivalry between the New Zealander and the Southern Cross to the establishment of the NZ Herald and the Auckland Star as the papers that would dominate Auckland life, the story of Auckland's newspapers is an engrossing battle of wits revealing the larger history of the people and the press in New Zealand. David Hastings has substantially researched numerous newspapers in one period in one town to tell that story and to tackle larger questions. Was it politics or commerce, readers' whims or something else that drove the rise and fall of newspaper empires Did newspapers lead or follow public opinion Were they shaped by owners or editors Was the newspaper world in 1900 shaped by different forces than in 1845 The newspaper wars of nineteenth-century Auckland were life or death struggles - with the odds heavily in favour of death. Extra! Extra! tells the story of the newspapers, the editors and reporters and owners who made them, and the readers who decided what was news and which papers would live or die. David Hastings is the author of the bestselling Over the Mountains of the Sea. He is editor of Auckland's Weekend Herald and was previously deputy editor of the NZ Herald for a decade.

Reviews

"Here New Zealand Herald veteran David Hastings reveals the rambunctious beginnings of Auckland journalism." --Brian Rudman, columnist, New Zealand Herald

"Theory turned on its head. Old news does matter. David Hastings proves that with this painstakingly researched and brightly written portrait of New Zealand pioneer newspapering: the people who wrote and ran the papers, their feuds and foibles, their triumphs and their troubles." --Pat Booth, journalist, Auckland Now

Author Bio

David Hastings was born in 1952 in Belize City, in what was then British Honduras, South America, of English parents. His father was in the colonial service and the family moved next to Gibraltar and then to Australia. Now based on Auckland's North Shore, Hastings has lived in New Zealand since 1987 and vividly remembers arriving there on a Saturday in October to find the crash of '87 had plunged the country into a terrible gloom. Hastings has worked as a journalist since 1970, having been a reporter, sub-editor, television news producer, coverage officer, foreign editor, news editor and editor. In Australia he worked at the Melbourne Sun, AAP, ABC radio and ABC TV, where he was the day editor in Melbourne, before moving to New Zealand. He is currently the Editor of the Weekend Herald, having been deputy editor of the NZ Herald for a decade from 2001 to 2011. Hastings has an MA(Hons) in History from The University of Auckland. His first book, Over the Mountains of the Sea: Life on the Migrant Ships, 1870-1885 (2006), was based on the research he did for his MA thesis, 'The Voyage Out: A Study in Power and Knowledge 1870-1885'. His second book Extra! Extra! How the People Made the News (2013) emerges from a combination of his interests in history and in journalism, being a study of nineteenth-century newspapers to see if the perspective of someone who has actually worked in the industry would have anything to add to theoretical ideas about what has made newspapers what they are.