Northland Age

The Northland Age was founded as the Mangonui County Times and Northern Representative in August 1904. The newspaper was based in the small Northland town of Mangōnui on the southern edge of Doubtless Bay, and it was started by local storekeeper Charles Wake. According to historian Guy Scholefield, Wake wanted to promote his brother, Theophilus, as the candidate for the Bay of Islands in the 1905 general election. Despite the influence of the Mangonui County Times, Theophilus lost the election to the sitting candidate.

The Wake brothers expanded their journalistic offerings in 1905 with a separate edition printed for circulation around the Bay of Islands known as the Bay of Islands Times, Mangonui and Whangaroa Counties Gazette. They also started a new weekly paper based at Kohukohu on the Hokianga Harbour. The new weekly, initially called the Hokianga County Times and North-Western Representative, ran until 1936, albeit under slightly different titles.

In 1905 the Wakes also added a regular feature in te reo Māori called Te Rerenga Wairua to the Mangonui County Times. The Manawatu Herald reported at the time that the column was started at the request of local Māori and would report the world’s news in brief.

In 1906 the ownership of the newspaper was transferred to the Mangonui Newspaper Company and on 8 May the paper’s new owners renamed it the North Auckland Age.

In 1916 the newspaper office relocated to Kaitāia. Two years later, in January 1918 the newspaper changed its name to the Northland Age, and Colonel Allen Bell, a shareholder in the newspaper company, became the editor. Bell remained as editor until 1922, when he was elected the MP for the Bay of Islands. Earlier that year he had also started up a new, Kaitāia-based paper called the Northlander, which lasted until 1933.

In 1928 the Northland Age had another name change, to the Guardian. It was known as this until 1931 when it was bought by John Berry, the proprietor of Kaikohe’s Northern News. Berry changed the title back to the Northland Age, and managed both newspapers until his death in 1953. His son Bruce Bryce-Berry then continued the Northland Age until ill health forced him to sell it in 1975.

The new owner, Wilf Wagener, was from nearby Houhora. He had no previous interest in the print industry but was worried that the Far North might lose its only locally-owned newspaper. It was a good decision — by 1987 4,500 copies of the Northland Age were being printed twice a week. Wilf Wagener’s son Keith took over management of the paper in 1988 and ran it for a further 20 years. The family’s association with the newspaper finally ended when Keith retired in 2008 and the paper was sold to APN News and Media.

In 2020 the Northland Age was one of the regional newspapers required to halt print publication during the lockdown of March and April, as part of the New Zealand government’s response to the Covid-19 pandemic. The print version of the newspaper returned five weeks later, but with the number of staff halved, after two positions were disestablished.