Over this next week, and in time for the Matariki long weekend, we will be bringing together our two iconic local papers into a single publication, free in print, delivered weekly to your letterbox and in news stands around the island’s villages, wharves (both here and cityside) and central city hotels.
It will combine both familiar titles under the masthead Gulf News & Waiheke Weekender.
We thank our faithful island stockists for their counter space and being a weekly part of the team for over five decades.
Both publications will keep their same unique content and feel, and the same Pendragon Press team will be stronger than ever to bring you the stories that matter most to you.
It’s the best of both worlds and a way for us to expand the reach of both papers while keeping advertising prices low for our local businesses and our readers satisfied, happy and as entrenched in community life as ever.
The move comes after the continued disruptions of the last six years, beginning with Covid, followed by several years of recession, inflation, a cost of living crisis and now an ‘on again, off again’ war in the middle east and ensuing fuel crisis signalling more looming inflation. Along with increasing data storage costs and subscription pricings which will affect all businesses, big and small, in the coming years.
After more than 50 years bringing you the news, we know it is imperative that businesses, households and governments all prepare for the worst while hoping for the best, knowing that no matter what, a significant global adjustment process is underway.
We are, in the words of my favourite Botswana born stand-up comic, Trevor Noah, quite literally, “living through history”.
As usual, for as long as I have known the island, groups of us are already addressing many of the processes we will need to navigate these new challenges including uncertain supply chains and vanishing businesses at high levels.
We will be bringing you all the news and views, quality investigative journalism and unique and in depth features, as well as coverage of the thriving sport, arts and events that make the island such a vibrant place to live.
It is with a pang of regret we must change our island newspaper’s familiar and intimate size, dictated 50 years ago by garage-sized offset printing presses, seaplane deliveries of typesetting and printing paper and convenience on commuter ferries.
That size was initially an oddity in a country of omnipresent local newspapers and family dynasties around the regional centres, but it is encouraging to see an increasing number of community newspapers emerging, sometimes in areas previously left bereft after the Stuff and NZME closures.
It signals a genuine need for local news and our particular style of rigorous local reporting and investigation.
A survey we ran in the 1990s showed that most Gulf News issues stayed around the house for more than a month and often much more. The number of people who still produce old Gulf News clippings that chronicled their own lives in some way, carefully saved and sometimes from previous decades, has us always present to our role as Waiheke’s journal of record.
A small-town newspaper’s role is a privilege and a responsibility, sharing access to not only vital information needed for any sort of participation by its community in local governance but also the fortunes and threats faced by its businesses, working community and the youngest and oldest of us.
I am proud of where we have got to as an island community and the part the paper has played in that. Despite our proximity to Auckland and the obvious pressures for development, including from successive local authority amalgamations, we are neither an enclave of the very rich or a slightly backward suburban outpost.
We share the fortunes of each and salute what we have made of ourselves over the years. Especially in the area of community trust.
Unlike the mega-malleable and extractive online news environment, readers scrutinise every word, balanced against local lore and citizen aspirations, judged out in the community.
And don’t be surprised if our quiet print revolution gets louder in the months ahead as the pixilated bombardment of the AI and digital age grows, a pingless page feels like a treat and the threats inherent in AI – and unregulated AI at that – run their course.
This is our way of making our journalism available to everyone in the community through the tough times.
We live in paradise after all.
• Liz Waters
© Waiheke Gulf News Ltd 2025
