The New Zealand Truth was a tabloid newspaper published weekly in New Zealand. It started as the Auckland Truth in 1887. Described as “scandal mongering” and “scurrilous”, it has employed well-known New Zealand authors, including Robin Hyde in 1928.  Redma Yska, once a Truth reporter, has recounted how the paper “introduced a `new journalism’ in 1905, which aimed a core diet of sex, crime, radical politics and random muckraking directly at the masses.” He ends by noting that at the end of 2009, “after 104 remarkable years in New Zealand journalism, Truth quietly sank into liquidation. Truth Weekender, complete with 16-page sex industry pullout, quickly took its place. The wicked old title refuses to die.” [see ref. 1]

As SPCS has pointed out in a series of published articles on its blog, since at least 2007, Truth directors’ seeming obsession with porn sleaze and prostitution advertising ( e.g. a regular 16- page “adult services” pullout in The Truth Weekender ) as a means of earning a quick buck, played an important part in its collapse – leading to the liquidation of two companies and numerous creditors left out of pocket. 

The announcement in mid-June 2013 of the closing of the paper was followed by its publisher – Truth Weekender Ltd [“TWL”] being put into liquidation on 2 July 2013 by special resolution of the shareholders (at the time the tabloid was called the Truth Weekender). The First Report by the Liquidators listed the company at that time as having 56 creditors. The IRD was estimated to be owed about $30,000, trade creditors $110,630 and related party debt $301,280. The company remains in liquidation with little prospect of any of the unsecured creditors receiving anything.

The Truth Weekender had in fact emerged from the earlier tabloid known as NZ Truth, whose publisher  – Truth Publications Ltd (“TPL” incorporated on 17 January 2007), was put into liquidation on 21 October 2009, reportedly owing lenders and creditors over $620,000. [Read more…]