When Local Newspapers Close, Communities Lose Their Voice

The reported closure of 14 community newspapers isn’t just the loss of a physical product; it’s the silencing of voices that hold a community together. These papers didn’t just cover council meetings or school sports - they amplified the stories of everyday people. Among those most impacted are individuals and groups wanting to build a digital future but facing barriers along the way.

Local newspapers often served as platforms for people working to overcome challenges in accessing and navigating the digital world. They told stories of seniors learning to use online services, shared timetables of the digital literacy programmes at libraries, gave insights into the experiences of rural communities with limited connectivity and warned of scams targeting our most vulnerable.

Alongside the major benefit of these papers being delivered directly to the doors of the communities it served, these stories were often picked up by NZME and shared digitally across the motu. For us at DECA, this allowed access to important community issues and initiatives that we would otherwise have no idea existed. Those on the ground, delivering services through volunteer or library systems don’t often think to blow their own trumpets. They are too busy doing! With these papers gone, the loss of information sharing is significant.

We want to help. Our blog is here to provide a platform for communities to share their stories, challenges and successes in navigating and shaping the digital world. We recognise this is a digital offering, so it’s never going to have the hyper-accessible localised impact of a physical paper. However, it is a platform that reaches a network of tech corps, central and local government and those in community working to close the digital divide.

If you have a story to tell, an event to promote, or an issue to raise, we encourage you to share it with us.

You can email us on support@digitalequity.nz or text / call us on 0221719278