Abstract
David Hastings’ Extra! Extra! How the People Made the News covers the turbulent fortunes of Auckland’s newspapers over six decades, from the 1840s to the turn of the century. Chronicling the successes and scandals, scoops and errors of Auckland papers such as the New Zealander, the Southern Cross, the New Zealand Herald and the Auckland Star, the book gives an illuminating and well-rounded history of the papers, their place in the community and country and their unending efforts to attract and retain readers.
A former editor with the New Zealand Herald, Hastings brings an insider’s eye to media history and an instinct for the story at the heart of the matter. As the title suggests, he rejects the view that newspapers are an instrument of the establishment used to shape the opinions of the public and through the example of Auckland’s early newspapers seeks to offer ‘a different kind of explanation about newspapers, a pragmatic one that [says] they had to reflect the tastes and interests of their communities if they were to be successful’ (p. 6). It is no coincidence that he opens with an anecdote about famed New Zealand Herald reporter Henry Brett rowing out to the steamer Lord Ashley in 1868 so as to be the first to bring back the news it carried. Hastings wants us to see the process from the perspective of the reporters and editors who knew that they were in a continual battle for circulation and that their livelihoods depended on providing news the public found both interesting and timely.
The pragmatic journalist’s view of the media process means that this is a very different kind of work from many contemporary media histories and analyses. Fashionable theorists such as Habermas, Herman and Chomsky are summarily dismissed by page 5 and not mentioned thereafter, while Foucault and Derrida are not mentioned at all. One suspects that Hastings knows that he needs to at least demonstrate awareness of such work but has little time for such abstract intellectualisation and mentions them as early as possible in order to dismiss them and clear the decks for a more straightforward and traditional historical perspective. This is not to say that such an approach is entirely unwarranted or unwelcome. Indeed, one of the strengths of this book is that it manages to present the issues of the era – Maori and Pākehā relations, mining and shipping news, labour and women’s rights – with a clarity and even-handedness that would be perhaps unavoidably compromised in a more overtly political and deconstructive work. What this book offers instead is an accessible and often fascinating history that eschews the theoretical criticism that can often work to marginalise the role of the public in shaping the media and resolutely places them at the centre of the narrative. Lavishly illustrated, with useful notes, bibliography and index, Hastings’ book succeeds admirably.