Journalist, former Hawke’s Bay Today editor Andrew Austin dies

Andrew Austin was editor of Hawke's Bay Today for six years. Photo / NZME

Career journalist and former Hawke’s Bay Today editor, Andrew Austin, has died.

Originally from South Africa, he passed away on Saturday after battling cancer, aged 57, and is survived by his wife and three daughters.

Austin moved from Auckland (where he was chief reporter for the New Zealand Herald) to take up the Hawke’s Bay Today editorship in March 2012.

He remained in the role for six years and more recently had edited the Hawke’s Bay App for about two years.

Described by his family as having “ink in his veins”, he never stopped writing.

In December 2013 he chanced upon an invitation from NZME to return to his homeland to cover Nelson Mandela’s funeral.

The assignment, he wrote, was a deeply personal one: “As I stood there by myself, a little removed from the crowds, I reflected on what being there at this historic moment meant to me ... the day of the memorial service had been a miserable day but now as I stood there, I was baking under the hot, dry Pretoria sun ... I admit that for the second time in a week - the first was when I heard Mandela had died - I shed quiet tears.”

The subsequent series of reports and insights culminated in him winning Feature Writer of the Year at the 2014 APN Regional Media Awards.

During his tenure he oversaw Hawke’s Bay Today move to morning editions in 2012, and the 2013 format switch from broadsheet to compact for weekday papers.

In his final editorial in 2018 he wrote his role was “very demanding,” yet he’d “loved every minute of it.”

A service will be held at Hastings Elim Church on Friday, February 28 at 1pm.