WELLINGTON, New Zealand (AP) — The mayor said she was devastated and the prime minister called it a sad day Tuesday after the capital received word that its 137-year-old afternoon newspaper, the Evening Post, would be printing for last time.
The paper’s Tuesday afternoon edition — the first to hit newsstands since parent company Independent Newspapers Ltd. announced the title’s demise on Monday — carried a front-page banner headline “Post Spirit to Live On.”
A second front page story described the “Shock, Horror at Loss.”
Wellington Mayor Kerry Prendergast said she was devastated at the axing of the afternoon daily, which soon will be printing its last edition ahead of its merger next month with the morning Dominion newspaper. The merger will result in the loss of 90 jobs, most of them from the editorial department.
“I’m sure all Wellingtonians feel exactly the same way. I feel very sorry for the staff,” Prendergast said.
Prime Minister Helen Clark said it was a sad day for Wellington.
“It’s been a very lively paper and it’s become part of the commuting culture of Wellington,” she said.
Thousands of phone calls, e-mails, letters and faxes of support flooded the Evening Post’s office after Monday’s announcement.
But it was the sort of support the paper has been missing in recent years. Since 1975, readership has slumped by almost 50 percent to just 54,000 in this city of 400,000. In recent years, the drop in sales was joined by a rise in print costs and reduction in advertising revenue.
On the Tuesday edition’s opinion page, an upbeat editorial defiantly proclaimed: “So we’re closing — but we beat the odds” by surviving for so long.
Former editor Tim Pankhurst, one of the editorial staff with a secure job on the new combined Dominion Post morning paper, promised a “bigger, brighter and better” morning daily.
The Post’s cartoonist, former political columnist and author Tom Scott, said it was dreadful to see the demise of “a grand old lady” which has “a humanity and warmth about it that some papers lack.”
In a reminder to readers of the paper’s “heyday,” the Post also published a 1935 election night picture, showing thousands of local citizens watching results posted outside its central Wellington offices.
A well-known New Zealand news show anchor, John Campbell, who once delivered the Evening Post to homes in Wellington applauded the paper’s dedication to local issues — and the local rugby team.
“I grew up with the Evening Post and I’m terribly sad,” he said. “It’s part of the definition of Wellington. I love the unabashed optimism that preceded every Hurricanes game and then the dismay which followed when they performed badly.”
