FIRST NEWSPAPER IN OTAGO

Evening Post, Volume LXXXIII, Issue 88, 13 April 1912, Page 13

FIRST NEWSPAPER IN OTAGO

The first newspaper published in Dunedin was tho Ot«go Newe, which caw the light on 13th December, 1848. It struggled on as a fortnightly for six or 6even months, and then fluttered weekly until December, 1850, when it disappeared. In February, 1851, the Otago Witness was born, and appeared in the settlement once a week, until the rush for gold eet in, in 1861, ■A-hen Julius Vogel arrived on the scene from Victoria, and persuaded the proprietor to issue a daily paper. In November of that year the undertaking was commenced, under the heading of the Otago Daily Times, and the paper has never looked back. Vogel was tho first editor and partner of tho original proprietor (W. H. Cutten), and B. L. Farjeon (subsequently a kind of novelist) was the business manager. Farjeon bought out Cutten in 1864 or '65, and with Vogel ran the paper until it was floated into v a company in '66. In 1867 Farjeon gave up the managership, and proceeded to London to exploit his literary abilities, and Vogel's hankering after politics led to his being retired from the editorial chair the following year. George Fenwick, the present managing director of the Times and Witness INewspapera Company, oame into the concern in, 1877, and nobody is likely to charge him with being sorry for the speculation (writes "Craigilee" in the Bulletin).