City Voice

For just over eight years from April 1993 to June 2001, City Voice was Wellington's most important independent local media outlet. Published weekly, 21,000 copies of the newspaper were delivered free to every letterbox in the CBD and the inner-suburbs with another 7000 copies available for people to pick up from wire-mesh stands on city streets or from cafe counters. It became the go-to publication to find out what was happening in the city at a time when use of the internet was still largely confined to universities and government institutions. Running with the tagline, "News You Can Use", City Voice ignored the crime, violence and disaster stories common in most conventional news outlets and wrote about issues where it thought that the public could make a difference such as the development of the waterfront, the inner-city motorway bypass or proposed user-charges for various community services. It also provided a mouthpiece for a new generation of activists before the introduction of social media as well as holding the City Council and local body politicians to account.

You can read more about the history of City Voice on our blog page here. 

Wellington City Libraries wishes to thank the former directors and staff of City Voice for allowing us to digitise this publication and to make it available on a Creative Commons basis. You are welcome to use and share material from the newspaper on a non-commercial basis but please include a full reference including the author's name, page number and date of issue. Please include a link back to the respective page on Recollect wherever possible. 

The search box below operates as an 'exact phrase' search of the City Voice collection but more advanced searches are possible on the results page. Filter search results by format (selecting "Newspapers") to help isolate results to the publication. Return to this page to run additional City Voice-specific searches. You can browse the collection by expanding the year required below or via the 'Newspapers' tab on the home page