On Monday night the club welcomed Reay Neben, described in the clubs invitation as "undoubtedly the matriarch of community newspapers in New Zealand". And Reay lived up to the introduction. The Times and the community have grown up together, both changing and adapting to the what has been a period of sustained growth. As subdivisions popped up across the region "gone were the cows crossing Fortunes Road".
For the past 50 years the Times has chronicled the events of a rapidly growing and changing community. Its archives hold a wonderful record of our community as it was, as it changed and as it is now. As a local paper dedicated to local news and events it has recorded things that will have gone unremarked in the larger city wide and national papers. From the descriptions of the development of the Historical Village, to the building of the colonial style shopping centre via a local lawyer by the name of Winston Peters standing for the seat of Hunua to now King Charles riding a bicycle around Lloyd Elsmore Park. While not its core business, the paper has also reported on more contentious issues such as the petition to parliament to stop the changing of the name for the area to Te Irirangi.
At the same time as our community has changed so to has the newspaper publishing business. Reay said "We still produce the news but now in so many different ways." From the he early days of including a photo [then black and white] involved multiple steps and a darkroom pages being put together by experienced typesetters to digital publishing. Those changes have opened up a raft of improvements in design, the ability to make changes right up to publication and the ability to reach an expanding population.
The Times was the second newspaper in NZ to move to using a digital camera. At $30,000 it was an expensive investment but Reay estimates it paid for itself in eighteen months. Desktop publishing thanks to Apple changed everything. Every paper was made up on a screen, colour became the norm and the paper purchased its own press. The Times was also an early adopter of electronic publication via its website www.times.co.nz and in 2005 they won the Pacific areas newspapers association marketing award with heir on-line voting for Miss Howick beating the much larger Sydney Morning Herald's coverage of the 2004 Olympic Games.
In an interesting aside Reay commented that the paper has also been a major employer of people delivering the paper including the current Leader of the Opposition , Chris Luxon. From humble beginnings. Reay is justifiably proud of the paper and its commitment to our local area and of the wonderful team that put it together.