Paper’s new owners value worth to community
WESTPORT: The News, one of New Zealand’s smallest daily independent papers, is changing hands.
Chief reporter Lee Scanlon and husband Kevin have bought the Westport newspaper from editoratlarge Colin Warren, and his wife, Mary.
The Warrens have owned the newspaper for 39 years.
The Scanlons, who are both in their 60s, said they had never contemplated owning The News.
‘‘We’re convinced The News is worth saving,’’ Mrs Scanlon said.
‘‘Colin and Mary have made a huge effort to keep the paper going, but The News can’t rely on their goodwill forever.’’
The Scanlons said they believed the newspaper was more at risk than at any time in its 146year history.
They were acutely aware of the tough times facing Buller and the challenges confronting newspapers worldwide.
‘‘We want to ensure The News survives. Whether we succeed will depend on how much local people value having a local paper,’’ she said.
Mr Scanlon said the commun ity would be much poorer without its daily paper.
‘‘Just think of what we’d never know.
‘‘We’d know little about the current threats to our health services until it was too late to do anything.
‘‘We’d be pretty much in the dark about local crime and court news.
‘‘We wouldn’t know what our local councils were doing.
‘‘We’d lose local human interest stories, local sport reports, letters to the editor columns and opinion pieces, the photos The News runs almost daily of local kids, local advertisements.
‘‘We probably wouldn’t realise how much we’d lost until it was gone — and we’ll never get it back.’’
The couple said the newspaper would not have survived until now without the Warrens.
‘‘Colin and Mary have made a huge commitment to this community,’’ Mrs Scanlon said.
‘‘They kept the Westport News afloat when many owners would have walked away, and turned down opportunities to sell the business because they had no guarantee the newspaper would continue in anything like its current form.
‘‘They saw themselves as caretakers of a local treasure. We hope we can live up to their example.’’
Colin Warren has a 50year history with The News. He began working there as a photojournalist in 1966.
He and his wife bought the paper from Nelson Evening Mail owners, the Lucas family, in 1978 and set up a local press so the paper could be printed in Westport. — The News