Wairarapa Standard

Wairarapa’s first newspaper, the Wairarapa Mercury, was launched in Greytown, the country’s first inland town, in January 1867. It was extraordinary that any Greytown-based paper survived at all during the early settler years. Apart from the heavy bush still to be converted into pasture and the regular flooding of the nearby Waiohine River, Greytown’s population had struggled to only 479 souls six years after the paper was launched. Contact with the other townships in the valley was difficult and hazardous given the rivers and streams to cross and rudimentary roads.

The newspaper had, in fact, been foreshadowed eighteen months earlier. It was announced in the Evening Post of 4 August 1865 that a new weekly, the Wairarapa Mercury, ‘advocating the local interests of the Wairarapa, free from class predilections and party bias’, would be published shortly in Greytown ‘under the management of Mr R Wakelin’. Four days later the Wellington Independent added its comment about Richard Wakelin: ‘....from the ability of the editor, as well as his lengthened connection with the Press, we have no doubt, but that our embryo contemporary, when started, will prove a valuable journal ....’ Later widely known as the ‘father of New Zealand journalism’, Wakelin had edited the Wellington Independent between 1852-1859.

In the event, the embryo had a long gestation, and the paper did not appear until the first Saturday in January 1867. The paper was started by Edward and Charles Grigg, who had previously worked for the Wellington Independent. Wakelin assisted editorially until November. At the beginning of 1868 he began the bi-weekly Wairarapa Journal which, when he found the enterprise unprofitable, morphed into the Wellington Journal, published in the capital until it, too, ceased later in the year.

Like many early papers, the Wairarapa Mercury was badly affected by fires. After the second, on 19 November 1868, Archibald Arnot, who had become sole owner, manager and editor, was able to buy from Richard Wakelin the Albion double demy machine that had printed the Wellington Journal and to continue publishing with only a month’s break. The paper continued until early August 1872, when Arnot was committed for trial for embezzlement. He sold the paper to a Mr Hirschberg and, it was reported, committed suicide the same month. Hirschberg promptly sold the paper to Richard Wakelin, who became sole proprietor and editor, and published the first issue of the re-named, twice weekly Wairarapa Standard on 19 August. The Wellington Independent commented rather tartly that: ‘it evidently aims at a higher standard than its predecessor ever did’.

Several months later, Wakelin’s son-in-law Joseph Payton, a school teacher, joined him for six years, before launching the Wairarapa Daily in Masterton. With assistance, Wakelin continued to run the Standard, which at times appeared three times a week.

On his death in 1881 the Wanganui Herald noted that he was ‘always a consistent Liberal in politics, being one of the firmest defenders of an open and honest system of land administration ..... and a vigorous defender of Sir George Grey, whose policy in the early days he ably upheld ....’.

The Wairarapa Standard was subsequently owned by William C Nation and a brother before William F Roydhouse bought the paper in 1893. Later owners included the Nicol brothers, and Thomas McCracken. After a further fire in 1937, the Standard was printed in Masterton, surviving as a tri-weekly and through further ownership changes until 1942.