Sunday Star-Times goes compact

The year was 1965. Geoffrey Negus was 24, working at a newspaper printing press in Wellington as a ‘‘stone hand’’ – someone who arranged the pages before they went to print.

He was, he recalls, ‘‘quite literally a bundle of nerves’’ when his supervisor told him to compose the front page of the first NZ Sunday Times, the edition of May 30, 1965.

‘‘My hands shook,’’ he said. ‘‘It was the launch of something truly special.’’

This week, a team of editors and graphic designers sent the last broadsheet front page of the Sunday Star-Times (as it’s now known) to hi-tech presses in Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch.

From this coming Sunday, October 21, the Star-Times will print as a new compact newspaper – and with this comes a renewed commitment to quality New Zealand journalism. New Zealand’s national newspaper will be bolstered with more puzzles, more high-quality photography, and because it’s the weekend, more great food content.

Alongside Kiwi favourites such as Lynda Hallinan, David Slack, Alison Mau, Kylie Klein Nixon and Guy Williams, a new selection of writers will be joining the paper: