On March 8, 2003, Canvas, the NZ Herald’s flagship premium magazine, was launched in the Weekend Herald. Sarah Daniell looks back at the issues, people and scoops that have defined two decades of journalism.
On March 5, 2003, there was a party. A very big party. We know this becausephotographer Jason Oxenham had been trawling through our photo archives some time last year and came across a shot of the swanky Canvas launch 20 years ago. Photographer Dean Purcell, who sits right behind me today, was sent to cover the event, and says there was a huge marquee in Albert Park. A fountain. It was a reminder, as if I needed it, that photographers are a vital component in publishing a weekly magazine. Not just because they take compelling photos, but also because they alert us to important things — like milestones — when you are head-down in deadline mode. None of us works in isolation. Canvas is the mahi of many.
On Saturday, March 8, 2003, Canvas launched with a meaty profile of then-Prime Minister Helen Clark with her chief of staff Heather Simpson. Carroll du Chateau writes in her first editorial: “She is a complex, fascinating woman and we bring you insights you won’t have read before.”
Three weeks later, on March 22, a powerful cover story of a young boy, Maka Fa’Aoa, who suffered third-degree burns to nearly 70 per cent of his body. Du Chateau wrote that journalist Angela Gregory and photographer Paul Estcourt “built a remarkable relationship with Maka, as they pieced together the tender story of a child’s journey back from the edge of death. They trailed him to Henderson Mall, to McDonald’s, and to the simple home he shares with 10 cousins and siblings, plus step-parents. They watched him at school when some of the little kids who were scared of his distorted face were quickly won over by Maka’s full-on personality. And most of all they observed the painstaking, delicate work carried out on his thin, scarred body by the team at Middlemore Hospital’s burns unit, led by Dr Michael Muller.”
That story, and those early issues of the magazine, set the tone and commitment to solid, rigorous journalism and while the media landscape has radically changed, that dedication remains.
But how do you look back over 50 weeks of covers for 20 years (1000, give or take) that represent the mood, people and issues of the times? I decided the way to do it was to select both significant and random dates from each year, from that very first issue, to now.
In that little voyage of discovery, it was fascinating to see changes in magazine style and design, and who made the cover. But what came through consistently was that the stories contained the same essence, the same vital ingredients, that remain an editorial benchmark today: universal truths and warm-blooded human stories that readers could relate to.
The media landscape has changed radically but not the concerns: in 2007 the cover story was a guide on how to have a low-carbon diet: “34 bright ideas for saving the planet and cutting your carbon emissions”. Imagine if we had started to do then, what we are still talking about doing now?
Quite by chance, I found a 2011 cover story featuring a friend, Gua Loheni, and her sister Nilla, who were making it big as designers on the fashion scene. It was way before my time as editor. I messaged Gua: “Guess what I found. Seriously, what are the odds?”
I tried tracking down Maka, the little boy who fell into the fire. He is a hero in every sense of the word — but at the time of going to press, I had no leads. I did speak with Angela Gregory, who said du Chateau was worried it might be a bit heavy for the third issue.
Maka’s story came about because Middlemore Hospital didn’t have a dedicated burns unit, Gregory told me. “Many people were moved by the coverage and came forward asking how they could help.” It was years before Givealittle. Gregory won Best Health Feature in the 2004 Qantas Print Media Awards and she was a finalist for that story in the 2003 NZ Peace Foundation Media Peace Awards in 2003.
What that story did, crucially, was reveal a lack of resources in hospitals, but it also showed humanity at its very best and most generous — a characteristic of most great stories.
In conversation by email with du Chateau, I asked what her goal for Canvas was back then; what was her abiding philosophy? What must the magazine stand for and what must it give the readers?
“I’d been trained by [Metro founder and editor] Warwick Roger, who was a really, really good editor, and so I just followed more or less what he had done … things that hadn’t been done before. He gave us [journalists] the backing to get out there. I wanted Canvas to be honest and fresh and interesting by getting out on the street, in the community.
“He [Roger] was absolutely fabulously good; hard as hell as well, you know. He was tough. He supported us [his writers] to go out into some really scary situations. No editor I know of would have done that. He was the person, he really was. Nicola Legat [Metro senior writer and later editor] was very good too.”
Working at the NZ Herald, she said, “felt pretty stiff at the time. We pushed really hard to cover complicated stories and it got better and better because it hadn’t been done before, not like this.”
“I hired good people and I required them to really put their foot down, to get out there and really push the stories. I was encouraging people to not just get on the phone but to be right in people’s faces, to work out who they really are. It was very important.”
Du Chateau was the first of five editors of Canvas, followed by the late Jan Corbett, Michele Crawshaw, Michelle Hurley and myself.
The issue that remains a highlight for me was the 2019 relaunch, merging Weekend magazine and Canvas. Greg Bruce interviewed Stacey Morrison about, among other things, her te reo Māori journey. It was unflinching, personal and political. I remember visiting indigenous designer Kiri Nathan who loaned us an exquisite kakahu for Morrison to wear for that auspicious cover shoot. While we chatted in her living room, Nathan casually pointed to a dress on a mannequin to be worn by then-Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, for an upcoming special event.
There was Greg Bruce’s award-winning cover story with Pania Tepaiho-Marsh — who taught hunting to marginalised wahine, to restore their mana.
Bruce wrote: “She charges the women nothing and gets no funding. She doesn’t want money. People have offered her money, sometimes thousands of dollars, to take them out and she has always said no. ‘I have no emotional attachment to money,’ she says. ‘It means absolutely nothing. I’ve been poor poor — homeless poor. I don’t give a s*** about money … This is my purpose. You don’t charge for your purpose.’”
Joanna Wane’s cover story on the Christchurch Girls’ High School sex abuse report, was crafted with compassion and attention to detail — and that issue formed part of the portfolio that earned Canvas best newspaper magazine at the 2022 Voyager Media Awards.
Scoops — we’ve had a few. It took weeks to set up the exclusive with Egg Boy -—Will Connolly — who in 2019 threw eggs at the Australian senator Fraser Anning. Bruce flew to Australia and the result was very moving and very funny. In negotiations with his PR there was a proviso: Don’t call him Egg Boy. Okay, I said, I promise. Our heading: “To make a superhero, first break an egg.” In 2021, another scoop: Wane’s cover with Nigel Borell, former curator at Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tamaki, on his shock resignation.
Despite relentless challenges, changing tides and market forces, what remains a constant, at the heart of Canvas, are those same ideals embraced at its launch in 2003: finely crafted, textured, layered, important stories that walk the line between fast-turnaround news-oriented features and in-depth profiles of subjects that aren’t necessarily seen over multiple media platforms. Presenting challenging ideas, being challenged ourselves, and providing a true reflection of our diverse community. Stories that change lives, laws and perspectives. And then there are our photographers, who capture what words cannot.
But, perhaps most importantly, this week is also a mihi, an acknowledgement of you, our audience, our readers.
Here’s to another 20 years of important, engaging journalism that stands the test of time.
