Queenstown’s undergone enormous growth, development and changes over the past 50 years. Chronicling its highs and lows throughout that time has been Mountain Scene, which turned 50 this week. PHILIP CHANDLER speaks to founding chairman Barry Thomas, who recalls the paper’s early struggles and also reveals how it turned the corner
Print media and longevity don’t always go together these days, but the paper you’re holding, or looking at digitally, turned 50 on November 1.
Queenstown, small town that it was, in 1972, hadn’t had a paper since the Lake Wakatip Mail folded in 1947.
Enter Barry Thomas, who’d recently set up an accountancy practice.
He recalls meeting up with a university mate, Roger Strang, who was into marketing.
‘‘He said, ‘why don’t we start a newspaper?’ and I said ‘I don’t know the first thing about papers’.
‘‘And he said, ‘well, my father’s got the [Balclutha paper] Clutha Leader, he’ll help us’.’’
Thomas says he was also keen to get another client on his books.
After forming a public unlisted company with 27 shareholders, Mountain Scene launched on November 1, ’72, with the front page headline, ‘Filling A Long Felt Need’.
In a public ceremony, Thomas, megaphone in hand, delivered the first of 6000 copies, printed by Gore Publishing, to local identity Barbara Lewis, watched over by borough mayor Warren Cooper, himself a small shareholder.
The free paper, which in those days also covered Wānaka, Te Anau and Cromwell, was just as much a promotional vehicle in its early years.
It also only came out fortnightly for its first year before becoming a weekly.
An early shareholder, lawyer Geoff Thomas, recalls sitting with Barry Thomas (no relation) on the deck of Strang’s home in Dunedin’s Macandrew Bay, when the idea for the paper was conceived.
Geoff says without Barry’s contribution Scene ‘‘would never have existed, and even if it had existed, it would have failed without him driving the thing’’.
There were lots of ups and downs, Geoff recalls — ‘‘it was nearly out the door I don’t know how many times’’.
There were also delivery problems — ‘‘I think Barry had the family out there delivering at one stage’’.
Scene also had quite a turnover of early editors.
Barry says what turned the paper around, editorially and financially, was the arrival in 1982 of former Aucklander Frank Marvin, who’d worked in book publishing in London.
Starting as an ad rep, he took over as manager, then in ’87 he and Barry, faced with a hostile takeover bid by an Invercargill party, bought out the other shareholders.
‘‘Frank was dedicated to making sure we charged a very high advertising rate, and we stuck to it right through, despite whingeing from a lot of clients,’’ Barry says.
Marvin also brought a hard edge to the story content which saw the paper gain national recognition and a slew of major awards.
Through relentless campaigning, also, the likes of rafting safety and timeshare marketing practices improved.
Along the way there were scrapes aplenty with local mayors and council officials as well as government bureaucrats who weren’t receptive to Queenstown’s problems.
Geoff Thomas notes Barry ‘‘would always back Frank and always said he would never interfere with editorial rights’’.
One scrape Barry remembers well was with mid-’90s All Blacks coach Laurie Mains — ironically, Barry later ended up on the New Zealand Rugby Union (NZRU) board.
Ahead of a Scene story on several All Blacks playing up at a nightclub during a Queenstown training camp, he says ‘‘I had every man and his dog on me saying, ‘you can’t do this to the All Blacks and NZRU’.
‘‘Well, the worst thing we did was tone down the story — if we hadn’t, we’d have been national headlines right through NZ.’’
Marvin sold his shareholding in 2006 to semi-retire, after which Barry’s son Richard took over as Scene’s publisher.
Disastrously, the paper also started up a newspaper in Dunedin — ‘‘it cost us a lot of money’’, Barry says.
In February, 2013, Dunedin-based Allied Press, which publishes the Otago Daily Times, bought Scene.
‘‘I was quite pleased in the end when [Allied Press owner Sir] Julian Smith decided to take it over.’’
At the time, Richard told the ODT: ‘‘This agreement sees Queenstown’s strongest media brand join NZ’s largest independent media entity.
“I’m 100% confident Mountain Scene’s future is in safe hands.’’
While delighted Scene’s made the half-century, Barry, 76, quips: ‘‘It also makes me feel bloody old.’’
