Auckland Chronicle and New Zealand Colonist

The Auckland Chronicle and New Zealand Colonist became Auckland’s second newspaper when its first issue appeared on 8 November 1841. It was started by Geoffrey Amos Eagar who had previously produced newspapers in Australia. Eagar had moved to Kororāreka in 1840 to start up the New Zealand Advertiser and Bay of Islands Gazette. That paper was suspended after the government invoked anti-press laws and used these to quash the editor’s criticisms of the colonial administration. 

Eagar then moved to Auckland after the capital of New Zealand shifted there in March 1841. He started the Auckland Chronicle in direct competition to the New Zealand Herald and Auckland Gazette and was determined to undercut the Herald’s circulation, by wooing away its employees if necessary. Not surprisingly, relationships between the two newspapers were never good, and by the end of 1841 John C Moore, the Herald’s manager and printer, had been fined for assaulting John Kitchen (?-1852), the editor of the Chronicle. 

By the end of 1841 publication of the Chronicle was suspended because of the government’s opposition to it. At the time the only printing press in Auckland was the government-owned one. The Chronicle re-started almost a year later, in November 1842. By then its only competition was the Auckland Times, which had started in August 1842, and was edited by Henry Falwasser (c.1790-1846). The two editors ‘bandied invective and sarcasm’ about the other’s publication, no doubt to the great entertainment of readers. By March 1843 William Warre Barrow had taken over the Chronicle, and both Eagar and Kitchen had moved back to Australia. Publication of the Chronicle was suspended briefly again in the middle of the year, but resumed in August and the paper continued to stagger on until the beginning of 1845, when it finally ceased. John Moore, who had taken over the paper in August 1843, had been trying to sell it since October 1844. Although the Chronicle only lasted around four years, it was recognised as one of the best literary papers of the day.