Otago Witness

The Otago Witness was a prominent newspaper in the early years of the European settlement of New Zealand, produced in Dunedin, the provincial capital of Otago. Inaugurated in 1851, three years after the founding of the city, the Witness was originally a four-page fortnightly paper, becoming a weekly publication within its first year. It was named the Otago Witness to indicate the city's connection with Edinburgh, where the Edinburgh Witness was a popular paper.^[1]

The Witness' early issues gained some notoriety for its polemical editorials, which were often skewed in favour of the political views and policies of Dunedin founding father Captain William Cargill, but soon became a more balanced journal and was widely distributed throughout the South Island, especially after the boom in Otago's wealth and population which followed the 1861 Central Otago goldrush. During this time a special goldfields edition of the paper was regularly published. At about this time, the paper gained further popularity through its introduction of illustrations, which were still a novelty for newspapers.^[1]

The popularity of the Witness declined during the early twentieth century due to competition from other forms of broadcast, notably radio and the newspaper's daily rivals, the Otago Daily Times and Evening Star. The paper eventually stopped publication in 1932.

References

1. ^ ^{a b} Papers Past, New Zealand National Library