With the issue of community newspapers and whether they qualify as an essential service (as with daily papers) before the Government this week, Times Media’s managing director REAY NEBEN clarifies the paper’s role during the Covid-19 lockdown
Last Tuesday we made the difficult decision to stop printing our papers.
While our whole team can work remotely, our primary concern was the many children and older people delivering papers in our neighbourhoods.
Although the media is an essential service we decided that our digital platforms would be the best option to continue bringing you the up-to-date happenings and relevant information for our area.
As it happens, the government yesterday delivered a ruling that the only printed media allowed to be delivered was a daily paper principally for the reasons we were concerned with last week. In short, community newspapers which service remote communities and essential non-English mastheads servicing specific communities can continue to operate. Others must depend on digital delivery.
The members of our Times team are working from their individual bubbles to continue to bring local information and news – just digitally on our website www.times.co.nz or and our Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/TimesOnlineNZ as well as via our newsletter (to subscribe go to our website homepage. It takes a few seconds to sign-on).
Strange times indeed. Our photographer is out and about taking snaps in our community. His images are on our website too.
As the local paper for 48 years, we are passionate about this community. Please be safe and stay home. The sooner we get rid of this thing, the sooner we can get back to some sort of normal.
