In 1874 the township of Gisborne sat on roads of muddy tracks and was home to about 400 European settlers.
On January 5 of that year, inhabitants of the primitive colonial outpost could read the inaugural edition of the then-named Poverty Bay Herald.
Like today’s Gisborne Herald, the paper reflected the times and technology of its era.
Printer H J Bushnell cranked out the Herald on a small “Lily” hand press at the rate of 200 copies an hour.
So what was on the front page of that first edition?
Advertisements, advertisements and more advertisements — as was long the norm for the newspaper industry.
News was not to feature on the front page of the Herald until 1966.
That first paper included ads from the likes of Boylan Brothers (storekeeper and general importers), Ormond House (fancy goods) and A Parnell (ironmongery and hardware).
The Poverty Bay Herald was based in a small wooden building “at the far end of the town at the time” and “set well back from the meandering unmade thoroughfare,” according to Margaret Rees-Jones in the book Printer’s Progress: A New Zealand newspaper story 1840-2014.
The paper started as a bi-weekly morning journal and was owned by the Hawke’s Bay Herald.
A group of 24 local citizens established the Poverty Bay Printing and Publishing Company and purchased the business in September 1877, with the aim of boosting the district and attracting more settlers.
In May 1878 the paper became a tri-weekly evening journal, moving to daily publication Monday-Saturday in October that year.
In May 1879 the company moved to its present site in Gladstone Road. (The current premises was built in 1905).
Frederick Dufaur and Captain Thomas Chrisp bought the business in December, 1879.
A momentous development in the history of the newspaper occurred in July 1883 when William McIntosh Muir bought Dufaur’s shares. The following year he sold the stake to his brother Allan Ramsay Muir, who in 1887 become the sole proprietor.
The Herald has remained in the ownership of the Muir family ever since, with numerous family members serving in management and staff. Since 1987 it has been owned in partnership with the New Zealand Herald.
The Muir family brought stability to the paper, which has had only seven editors since 1896 — compared with 12 before.
The longest serving have been Lennie Muir, 1896 to 1935, and Iain Gillies, 1980 to 2010.
Another notable editor was the future 1950-1977 Gisborne Mayor Sir Harry Barker, who was editor from 1935 to 1943.
The current editor Jeremy Muir has been in the post since 2010.
The Poverty Bay Herald purchased its rival, the more liberal Gisborne Times, in 1938 and closed it down — but retained most of the Times’ staff.
Even back then many felt Captain Cook’s name for the district was unflattering and unsuitable, and it was for this reason that the paper’s name was changed to The Gisborne Herald in 1939.
The Herald was published from the turn of the century to 1976 without much change in the method of production — that of using heavy, hot metal letters in a typesetting system.
The linotype machines could easily and quickly set complete lines of type for use in printing.
The machines had revolutionised mass printing.
But Herald staff member from 1963 to 2019 Graeme Miller, who started his career as a linotype machine operator, said the machines would never be permitted to operate under today’s health and safety requirements.
“Back squirts or molten lead would fly through the air,” he said.
“All of a sudden, the machine would start changing tune — so you turned away.”
Staff member from 1956 to 2013, Rodney Clague, said he still had “some little dots” on his body.
“There was the noise and the smell of lead.”
Herald staff member from 1964 to 2012 Trevor Petterson said the operator would have holes in his shirt.
“It happened quite regularly.
“It just squirted up.”
But the three men still marvel over the technology.
“You hardly touched it,” said Mr Miller.
“It was just a light tap.
“John Speakman was the best (operator) I’ve ever seen. His hands just glided over.”
Mr Clague had the highest praise for managing director Michael Muir.
“If ever we had a problem, we’d talk to Michael and it would be sorted.
“We never had to call the (chapel) union in.”
Printing with hot metal finally came to an end (with the exception of classified advertising) in 1976 when a Goss Community offset press was installed.
But the three men, like many Herald staff members, retrained to be proficient in new technology, and continued their long Herald careers.
The offset press introduced a photographic process where an image is transferred to aluminium plates and then to a blanket strapped on to the press.
The new technology allowed for more colour, more illustrations, and the printing of 19,000 copies per hour.
A new Goss Community Press was purchased in 1994 which had full colour capacity and could print 30,000 copies per hour.
The Gisborne Herald website was established in 1998.
Another dramatic change in technology was the 1999 move to pagination, placing the 125-year-old newspaper truly into the computer age.
Pagination enables sub-editing staff to put the pages together on a computer screen, taking stories from the then NZPA, overseas news agencies and Gisborne Herald reporters, all at the touch of a few buttons.
1999 was also the year the Gisborne Herald moved to a tabloid-size format.
That allowed for a paper that was easier to read, and had more pages and more colour.
A contemporary of the three printers was John Jones (staff member 1956 to 2019 with four years away) who, like his father Jack before him, was a long-term Herald chief reporter.
“The Gisborne Herald was the sole source of local news when I started. Just about everybody read it and it had real kudos with the public,” he said.
“My earliest memory is starting each day outside the paper in an informal meeting with other staff.”
Mr Jones, chief reporter from 1980 to 2005, went from using a typewriter in an editorial office full of cigarette smoke to today’s smokefree world of computer technology in a profession no longer dominated by men.
“I’ve been through generations of the Muir family starting with Geoff Muir who was editor and managing director, Percy Muir who was chief sub and on through Michael to the present editor Jeremy,” he said.
“The Muir family deserves great credit for the way they have maintained the tradition of an independent local paper.
“From the 1960s an increasing cohort of talented women worked at the Herald completely reversing the gender balance,” said Mr Jones.
“There was competition from radio news with reporters like my friend Derek Fox and Roger Handford.
“Sadly, that does not exist now.”
Mr Jones fondly remembers many great characters from the Herald workforce.
“There were strong men like Arthur Pierce who was the head of the printing department, and my father Jack Jones.
“Our first photographer Peter Bush was a hard-working, hard-partying man who went on to be a great (and famous) rugby photographer — and his successors Alan Peake, Bev Davy and ‘Rick’ Rickard have left their mark.
“Then there was my mate Pat Plunket (a nationally renowned journalist) who I worked with both here and in Christchurch, and eccentric but excellent journalists like Cecil Steere and Ian Munro.
“Iain Gillies joined us from Scotland in 1959.
“Then there were the printers, Rod Clague who started the same year as me, Graeme Miller, Trevor Petterson and so many others.
“At one stage we could even field a rugby team.”
A sad development was the end of local printing in May of 2023, just eight months short of the paper’s 150th birthday.
Like six other regional daily newspapers as well as major metropolitan papers, the Gisborne Herald is now printed by NZME in Auckland and is trucked south in the early morning hours.
The paper has now reverted back to being a morning paper and is published five times a week. It features more colour and there is no Monday publication.
Managing director Michael Muir said the changes were made to reduce costs and secure a sustainable future for The Gisborne Herald in the face of a challenging media and business environment.
