Otago Witness
[2] Graham expressed views in his newspaper such as advocating for a 10-hour working day, suggesting that the province was suitable only for grazing and not the agriculture that settlement was being planned on.
Matters deteriorated when he directly attacked the Free Church Association, the New Zealand Company and William Cargill accusing them of spreading misleading information about the prospects of Otago: This resulted in the cancellation of forty subscriptions.
In November 1849 the newspaper received a letter signed by 147 citizens (which was nearly every adult male in the Dunedin) in which they stated that they had no sympathy for the editor's views.
[2] Using the newly acquired printing plant, the first issue of the Otago Witness appeared in early February 1851, three years after the founding of the settlement, which by now had a population of 745.
As well as holding down the editor's position, Cutten was also the publication's reporter, advertising canvasser, subscription collector and pressman, with the only assistance provided by J.B. Todd, who was the compositor.
With Cutten becoming increasingly occurred with his other activities, William Reynolds acted in his absence[3] with the experienced compositor Daniel Campbell, who was bought out from Edinburgh to take responsibility for the newspaper's printing and publishing.
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 it soon became a more balanced journal.
William Lambert offered the use of his printing plant, with the condition that as he was deeply religious they could use it until after midnight on what was to him the sacrosanct Sunday.
[2] In that same year the 6 February edition featured its first linograph, that of George Parr's touring All-England cricket eleven.
Vogel, who was editor of both newspapers, identified that the completion of telegraph lines as the country was opened up gave the daily ODT an advantage.
[6] By 1864 this original material began to include fiction which would appeal to woman such as a serialisation over 35 issues of Sir Massingberd sourced from Chamber's Journal.
The new owners formed a public company in 1860, the Otago Daily Times and Witness Newspapers Co. Ltd, with Vogel, John Bathgate, F. C. Simmons and James Rattray as directors.
[8] In 1878 in response to a downturn in the Otago economy George Fenwick and Reed converted their business into a public company called the Otago Daily Times and Witness Newspapers Company, Ltd.[2] Following the death of editor Robert Wilson, his wife and four of their six children in the Octagon fire of 8 September 1879,[9] William Fenwick was appointed as his replacement and remained in this position for 27 years until his death in 1906.
[2] Although conservative in its views,[1] by the latter half of the nineteenth century the Witness provided an important outlet for local fiction writers with stories appearing such as Louie A. Dawson's A Gentleman of the Slums (1893), Fabian Bell's The Wonder Stone or Arita's Vengeance (1893) and Fred Morris's Castle Ludlow or Thrown Away (1894).
By the early twentieth century, the publication typically featured a wide range of literary and news content, including a cartoon, photographs and between eight and twelve pages of half-tone engravings.
During the latter half of the First World War, the publication printed studio portraits of the killed, wounded and missing in action, which often covered several pages.
[2] Following the death of Fenwick in 1906, Charles Fraser replaced him as editor and was succeeded by J. T. Paul, who remained in the position until the closing of the publication.
Members of what became "Dot's Little Folk" chose their own pseudonyms (though they had to supply their full names and addresses) and received badges (with approximately 4,000 "D.L.F" being issued).
[15] While "Dot's Little Folk" was at first initially dominated by children aged 6 to 12, by 1897 teens had started to fill the column with letters and by the 1900s were using it to write about their lives, interact with each other and organise social events.
[16] Soper subsequently moved to the Otago Daily Times, where she continued the "Dot's Little Folk" tradition until the end of the 1930s.
[15] A shortage of paper due to the war forced the Otago Daily Times to reduce its size by dropping, among other features, the "Dot's Little Folk" column, with the last one appearing on 30 December 1941.
The play "Where once our voices led: A nostalgic comedy", based upon the letters of the correspondent "High School Boy” to "Dot's Little Folk", was written and directed by Keith Scott and was performed at the Globe Theatre in Dunedin in August 2013.
