National KSM accolade shared

Reay Neben accepts her King’s Service Medal (KSM) on behalf of not only herself but also husband Brian, their family, the east Auckland community, and the “thousands” of people who have worked for them over five decades.

She received the KSM for services to print media and the community in the New Year Honours.

When the Times visited Reay and Brian Neben on December 31, when the Honours were made public, they were receiving many messages of congratulations from well-wishers here in east Auckland and across the country.

“It’s not an honour just for me,” says Reay.

“It’s for all the people – family have been involved forever, and all the thousands of people who have worked for us, who have been passionate as well about this community, because it wouldn’t be anything without everybody – all our delivery kids, too.

“There was an expectation they were doing it for the community. The team that worked with us gave us that.

“It’s 52 years of loving both things – the community and media – I was lucky enough to share those.”

Brian says: “All the journalists, the characters we’ve had down the years, all those people were so loyal to us, and we appreciated every bit of it.”

The past few years, especially from the Covid era, have been tough for Reay and Brian.

They’ve both had serious health issues to contend with, and then had to close Times Media last April, a casualty of the economic downturn.

Brian says: “One of the hardest things we’ve ever had to do was walking away from the business.

“We have received so many messages from people in this area when we closed down expressing their sorrow.

“When we got word, Reay and I sat down and thought we really can’t accept that [the honour]. Our company’s just gone under.

“So, Reay wrote and said we feel we may not be able to do it,” Brian says.

“They wrote back and said of course you can, and we want you to. That to us was so important. I felt bad saying to Reay I don’t think we can do this.”

Reay says: “They can’t take away 52 years.

“What’s pleasing is of all people, it always had to be Bo Burns to follow on,” Reay says, of the new owner of Times Media, who resurrected the news media business last April.

“What she did is bring it back in print [in August]. The advertisers realised when it was gone what they had lost.

“They [readers] love it now and it’s a new generation of people loving it.”

Reay and her first husband, Roger Smith, started the Howick and Pakuranga Times in 1972, as Auckland east of the Tamaki River was about to increase significantly in population.

It’s remembered as “a nappy valley” in the 1970s, and old Auckland expression.

“It really was. There was a Howick Post that covered Howick, but we realised there was going to be an eastern city. So, we had to make it Howick and Pakuranga. Had to embrace that,” says Reay.

“We started with true newspaper philosophy – hard news – and it was the perfect time because it [the area] was changing.

“The first papers we delivered were to 8000 homes, and that included Beachlands and Maraetai.”

Reay is remembered delivering the Times with daughter Emma in the pushchair.

During our visit with Reay, Brian and Emma on New Year’s Eve, there is much discussion about how east Auckland has changed – the expansion in population, ethnicities, commercial and residential property development and economy over half a century.

When Reay talks about the first delivery plan, she says Morrin Cooper’s son Brett drew up a map suggesting the areas of households to receive the H&P Times in their letterboxes – free.

How about that, from 1972, a free local news service, paid for by advertising bought by businesses who saw the value in letting readers know what they do?

It meant community involvement. “It needed to be.”

Brian, Reay’s second husband, well-remembered for running the print business, says: “If someone phoned up and we’d missed them – they hadn’t got their paper, we made sure we got it delivered as quickly as we could.”

Brian, and Reay, understand the newspaper business cover to back page.

He’s been in it his entire working life and was even a journalist – the editor of the Fiji Times for a period – and she, most of her life, as Reay’s also remembered for her time as a hairdresser.

Which probably explains her always timeless and fashionable white spike with raspberry tips hairdo. Great characters have great haircuts.

Reay has always spoken enthusiastically and informatively for countless causes and enterprises down the decades, and that energy continues to bubble as we chat about the national honour.

“It’s a privileged position. We saw what the [area’s development] plans were, what was going to happen. We had to be that voice of the community. That’s how it grew.”

Fast-forward three decades, and in the early 2000s Reay says the Times adapted with the advancement in technology.

“We had the second newspaper website in the country www.times.co.nz – and won the best website award for PANPA [Pacific Area Newspaper Publishers Association], so we beat the Los Angeles Times and all those big-name papers. With the little old Times.

“For me it’s about [press] freedom and honesty. The one thing I always pushed was women.

“I was the first woman on the Community Newspapers Association committee, and at the first meeting at 10.30am they asked me to make the tea. They only asked me once.”