Otago Daily Times

Otago Daily Times

Allied Press Building, Dunedin - the ODT's home.
Type	Daily (except Sunday) newspaper
Format	Broadsheet
Owner	Allied Press
Editor	Murray Kirkness
Founded	1861
Headquarters	Dunedin, New Zealand
Circulation	43,000
ISSN	0114-426X
Official website	www.odt.co.nz

The Otago Daily Times (ODT) is a newspaper published by Allied Press Ltd in Dunedin, New Zealand.

History

Originally styled The Otago Daily Times, the ODT was first published on November 15, 1861.^[1] It is New Zealand's oldest surviving daily newspaper - Christchurch's The Press, six months older, was a weekly paper for its first few years. The first issue ran to 2750 copies, and was sold for threepence.

The ODT was founded by W.H. Cutten and Julius (later Sir Julius) Vogel during the boom following the discovery of gold at the Tuapeka, the first of the Otago goldrushes. Cutten was the publisher of a weekly newspaper, the Otago Witness, which was founded in 1851, and the strong political views of co-founder Vogel saw an outlet in the ODT's pages, notably with advocacy for provincial government.

The ODT was originally published from premises in Princes Street, but moved to a new building at the corner of Dowling and Burlington Streets at the foot of Bell Hill in 1879. It stayed here until 1928 when it moved into larger premises on the other side of Burlington Street facing Queen's Gardens, where they stayed until 1977.

From the start, the ODT held a strong position among South Island newspapers. Most of its Dunedin opposition papers were short lived, with only the Evening Star surviving beyond the early 1900s. The Star' merged with the ODT in 1975 forming a new company, Allied Press, and the ODT moved to the Evening Star Building (now the Allied Press Building) in Stuart Street in June 1977. The Evening Star ceased publication in November 1979 because its readership was declining. As a result the Allied Press, now publishes the ODT and several smaller papers throughout New Zealand, including the Greymouth Star.

On January 5, 1998 the ODT published for the first time on a new Goss International printing press; on the same day it introduced a new masthead reading simply "Otago Daily Times", marking Otago's 150th anniversary year of Pākehā settlement.^[2]

The ODT is regarded^{[by whom?]} as the father-figure of the country's four main daily newspapers, serving the southern South Island with a circulation of around 43,000 and an estimated readership of 110,000.^[3]

Milestones

• 1861 - November 15: first edition
• 1881 - price dropped to one penny
• 1898 - first linotype machines installed
• 1900 - first photoengraving plant installed
• 1949 - first full time cartoonist employed
• 1952 - November: the ODT became the first New Zealand metropolitan paper to print news rather than classified advertisements on the front page
• 1955 - new general printing department inaugurated
• 1956 - wire photographic equipment installed
• 1961 - new enlarged format
• 1966 - first full colour gravure preprinting
• 1978 - October 13 and 20: no edition due to journalists' strike; first fissed days of publication in 117 years
• 1979 - November: Evening Star ceased publication; ODT size increased to compensate
• 1980 - August: three separate editions published for first time, serving Dunedin city, North Otago, and Central/South Otago
• 1981 - july: first computerised publishing
• 1987 - December: change to coloured masthead
• 1988 - November: new typeface and formatting
• 1990 - June: first full-process colour printing

Policies and personages

In its formative years, the ODT was active in many campaigns for social reform, none more important than the exposure of sweat shop working conditions in Dunedin in the 1880s by Editor Sir George Fenwick and Chief Reporter Silas Spragg, which led to major law reforms.

Sid Scales was a cartoonist for the ODT for 30 years until his retirement in 1981. Since then Queenstown artist Garrick Tremain has been the principal cartoonist. The editor is Murray Kirkness, who took over from long-serving editor Robin Charteris in April 2007.

Editors

• 1861–68 - Sir Julius Vogel
• 1868–71 - George Burnett Barton
• 1871–77 - W D Murison
• 1877–78 - George M Reed
• 1878–83 - J Ashcroft
• 1883–90 - Richard Twopenny
• 1890–1909 - Sir George Fenwick
• 1909–46 - Sir James Hutchinson
• 1946–61 - John Rowley Moffet
• 1961–76 - E A Aubin
• 1976–88 - Keith Eunson
• 1988–97- Geoff Adams
• 1997–2007 - Robin Charteris
• 2007– - Murray Kirkness

Notes

1. ^ Reed, A.H. (1956) The story of Early Dunedin. Dunedin: A.H. & A.W. Reed.
2. ^ Otago Daily Times, January 5, 1998, p1
3. ^ The Otago Daily Times, NZPA-online.

External links

• Otago Daily Times official newspaper website
• Allied Press official website of the publisher
• National Library of New Zealand Online Newspaper Archive
• Early history of the Otago Daily Times from the "Cyclopedia of New Zealand".