The Akaroa Mail turned 150 years old in 2026 — a rarely reached anniversary for a community newspaper. Akaroa Museum Collections Manager Daniel Smith shares the history of this longstanding local institution.
The Akaroa Mail's first issue was published on 21 July 1876. It has been serving the communities of Horomaka Banks Peninsula ever since. Unlike most current newspapers, small and large, it remains privately owned and independently published to this day.
The paper was established by Joseph Ivess (1844-1919) who ran it for one year, printing on broadsheet with a second-hand Columbian printing press, now in the Te Papa collection.
There have been several editors over its history. Howard Charles Jacobson (1841-1910) was the fifth and managed 20 years on the job.
In his first issue on September 13, 1881, he laid out his manifesto:
there are nearly 5000 people in this “fair county of Akaroa,” and to be the vehicle of their opinions, and the recorder of their doings will be the principal aim of the Mail in the future. …Banks Peninsula has widely different interests to those of the rest of Canterbury, and no pains will be spared to make all its inhabitants unite to attain beneficial ends for the whole community….
When Jacobson became ill in 1902, out of his 14 children, he sent for his daughter Ethel to take his place. With a double MA in English and French from Canterbury College, Ethel May Jacobson (1877-1965) took the helm in her capable hands, running the newspaper from 1903 to 1952, just shy of her own 50th anniversary but making for a remarkable seven decades of family ownership and editorial.
For most of its history the newspaper was printed in Akaroa. The firm was also a commercial printer producing local books, programmes, menus, invitations and tickets: an important service in a time before photocopiers and office printers. A linotype machine to produce type, an Original Heidelberg press, noise and the smell of ink remain in the memories of Akaroa locals who called into the office or worked there after school.
The Akaroa Mail office and printery
The current editor and proprietor, Michael de Hamel, took over in July 1985, and has passed his own 40th anniversary in post. He changed the newspaper from letterpress to offset printing by contract, and the local office and printery closed. The Akaroa Mail also became a fortnightly free paper, as it still is.
The issue celebrating its 150th anniversary was published on July 24, 2026.
