One hundred years ago, on the 18th April, 1840, the first newspaper to be published in New Zealand made its appearance. Printed in a raupo whare on the banks of the Hutt River where Petone now stands, the pioneer news sheet appeared within a month of the landing of press and type from the ship Adelaide.

The career of the “New Zealand Gazette,” like that of many of the early colonist newspapers, was short, but full of incident. Comprising four pages about the size of the present newspaper page, it consisted mainly of advertisements and local news, written in a racy style characteristic of its editor, Samuel Revans, who was a good businessman with but few pretensions to literary ability.

In politics our first newspaper was against the Government and its land policy and wholeheartedly in support of the New Zealand Company. Like so many other newspapers that have followed it, when its idol fell into disfavour among the settlers the “Gazette” also waned in popularity and, although it outlived its first rival by a year, its 363rd number was its last.

It was characteristic of early New Zealand journalism that the many journals which appeared had ephemeral lives, the average span of newspapers in the first ten years of organised settlement being only twenty months, consisting of weekly or less regular appearances. New Zealand, nevertheless, has always been well served with the news. In 1842, only two years after the founding of the colony, no fewer than nine newspapers were being published—four in Auckland, two each in Wellington and the Bay of Islands, and one in Nelson.