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Wairoa's mayor says the loss of the local paper will erode the community's democracy.
The final edition of the Wairoa Star goes on sale on Thursday with the paper closing just over 100 years since it began publishing.
It's another closure of a news outlet, and a further loss of journalism jobs.
The front page of the Wairoa Star on 30 April 2024. Photo: Screenshot / Supplied
"It's quite a sad day really" - Craig Little
Wairoa District Council mayor Craig Little said it was a sad day and the newspaper's closure would have a huge impact.
"The Wairoa Star is an institution, everyone uses it, they put everything into it, everything's advertised in it, you know from the dog trials to the gala."
The newspaper was being printed in Gisborne, but the Gisborne Herald was sold which meant the Wairoa Star could no longer be printed there, he said.
"They looked at a lot of other options and it is just too hard at the moment, but you know there might be hope, someone might come along and go 'well actually you know this could be a smaller paper and we could make it work'."
The newspaper's board was open to possible suggestions, he said.
"But it's just very sad because they are there, they're on the spot, they cover everything."
Wairoa is also covered by the Gisborne Herald and Hawke's Bay Today but Little said it was not the same as they were not located in the town and not everyone read those newspapers.
The Wairoa Star covers council meetings but journalists from other newspapers would be unlikely to travel a couple of hours to get there to report on a meeting, he said.
"It [the closure] happened so quick, the last paper's coming out today so it's going to be quite a shock to the community because a lot of people probably don't even know about it yet," he said.
"We're an older community and a lot of people love that paper."
Little said he would be talking to some of the Wairoa Star's board members but they probably had to make a decision to look after their shareholders.
"It's a really hard one, as you know papers all round the world are doing this, it's a sad day really."
"It is a tendency that we're seeing across the entire sector" - Peter Thompson
Meanwhile, the chair of the Better Public Media lobby group, Peter Thompson, who is an associate professor in media at Te Herenga Waka Victoria University in Wellington, said it was a trend that was being seen across the entire media sector.
The loss of Newshub's newsroom was the big news recently, he said.
"But there's some very similar patterns I think evident here, you know it's a small newspaper, it's been losing money recently and it's owned by a larger subsidiary which is obviously beholden to its shareholders."
NZME already owned about 40 percent of the Wairoa Star but when it acquired the Gisborne Herald in March 2024 that went up to about 63 percent ownership of the Wairoa Star, he said.
"I think that what we're seeing here is financial pressures coming to bear on small media operations and they don't take a lot of change in their finances to tip them from being viable to being not viable."
It was difficult to keep small media going given audience fragmentation and a significant advertising capture by social media platforms, he said.
Thompson said he would like to see a broad-based levy on digital advertising which could then be redirected to smaller regional media organisations.