Truth: The Rise and Fall of the People's Paper

Yska, Redmer

ISBN 10: 1877517305 / ISBN 13: 9781877517303

Published by Potton & Burton, Nelson, 2010

About this Item

204 pages, colour and b/w illustrations.

Seller Inventory # 011867

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Truth: The Rise and Fall of the People's Paper
• Publisher: Potton & Burton, Nelson
• Publication Date: 2010
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1877517305
• ISBN 13: 9781877517303
• Binding: Soft cover
• Edition: First Edition
• Condition: Fine
• Seller catalogs:
  • New Zealand
  • History

About this title

Synopsis

Publisher's FOR MUCH OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY, New Zealand Truth was the tough,vulgar tabloid newspaper that tapped the pulse of Kiwi populism. By the mid-1960s, the ‘people’s paper’ claimed an astonishing one million readers a week.This book tells how Truth revolutionised the local newspaper industry byintroducing a ‘new journalism’ in 1905, which aimed a core diet of sex, crime, radical politics and random muck-raking directly at the masses.It was a successful formula, and by the middle of the century, Truth was amedia governments bowed to its editorial campaigns and rival newspapers followed its innovations. What are now niainstays of modern newspapers, such as investigative journalism and salacious celebrity yarns, all began at Truth.Over the years the paper has also had a remarkable cast of journalists andcontributors including Sir Geoffrey Palmer, Sir Bernard Freyberg, Bruno Lawrence, Robin Hyde, Maurice Shadbolt and David Low.Truth’s scandal-ridden history has never been told before. Author Redmer Yska, himself a former Truth reporter, penetrates the inner workings of this scurrilous, colourful paper for the first time, and along the way provides a unique insight into the bigger story of the New Zealand media in the twentieth century.

About the Author

Redmer Yska has worked in journalism and communications for his entire career, including a stint as a reporter at New Zealand Truth in the 1970s. Since then he has worked as a media and communications consultant, a Parliamentary press secretary, a ministerial speechwriter, and a historian. In 2007 he was awarded a National Library Research Fellow to research and write this book. His previous publications include Wellington: biography of a city, All Shook Up: The flash bodgie and the rise of the NZ teenager in 1950s, and NZ Green: The story of marijuana in New Zealand.