Changing Times: The Story of a New Zealand Town and its Newspaper Bob Kerr

Changing Times: The Story of a New Zealand Town and its Newspaper

Bob Kerr
Potton and Burton NZ 
Hardback NZ$30
Paperback NZ$20
Reviewed by Trevor Agnew

Changing Times: The Story of a New Zealand Town and its Newspaper

Newspapers are the first draft of our history. Talented artist-author Bob Kerr has used the story of a small-town newspaper to create a miniature history of New Zealand. When printers James and Mary McPherson come ashore in 1840 they print the first issue of the New Zealand Times on their hand-operated Albion Press, recording the treaty signing at Waitangi. 

What follows is a series of snapshots of their family, their township and their newspaper through the decades, as recorded by the newspaper.

Wars, weddings and new technology are all experienced by the townspeople and reported in the news columns and advertisements. When the Great War erupts, we share the experience of scanning the paper’s casualty lists for the names of family members.
History marches on, and the town loses its post office and railway, while the paper is taken over by a media group and closed. Fortunately Bob Kerr has created a splendid website at www.mattsnewspaper.blogspot.co.nz where the NZ Times (and our history) lives on.

Trevor Agnew

October 2015

This review was first published in a Fairfax NZ newspaper on 28 November 2015