Wiadomości Polskie
Scanning project of the longest running Polish newspaper in New Zealand (published since 1950).
Early years - from newsletter to newspaper
Wiadomości Polskie is the longest running Polish newspaper in New Zealand and as such is a splendid source of information about the Polish community in this country. It has been published continuously by the Polish Association in Wellington since 1950. The Association itself was established in 1948, but it took two years of organizational work concerning statute, membership, meeting venues, setting a framework for various activities and so on, before the first official newsletter, called Komunikat No.1 was issued. It was dated March 18th 1950 and contained two pages. It had a circulation of about 240 copies printed and distributed amongst 222 members and about a dozen or so non-members of the Association. Five additional numbers of Komunikat were issued in that year. In the following years it was released monthly.
In its fourth year running, in June 1954, Komunikat changed name to Biuletyn Polski. It reflected a growing demand for more Polish language news and other reading material to be available in the community that was getting more and more vibrant, better organized and conscious of its role, cultural needs and aspirations. At that time, the simple newsletter style of the Komunikat was expanded and complemented with editorial columns containing articles by various members of the local polish community, written on local and general topics that would interest Poles living in New Zealand. It was a result of remarkable cooperation between Polish organizations active in the Wellington area at the time including the Polish Association, SPK (Stowarzyszenie Polskich Kombatantów – Polish Ex-soldiers Association), Komisja Skarbu Narodowego na Nową Zelandię (National Treasure Committee) and Father Leon Broel-Plater – Rector of the Polish Catholic Mission in New Zealand. Furthermore, the support of Poles residing in Auckland was also secured.
This way, with expanding content and news from Polish communities in other centres, the first Polish language monthly magazine in New Zealand was born. It lacked illustrations, volume, consistency and some good editing techniques yet, but aspirations were high.
Only four numbers, from June to September 1954, were issued under the banner of Biuletyn Polski. In October the magazine was given a new title – Wiadomości Polskie - and as such continues to be published today. Interestingly, the change appeared to be forced upon the editorial staff who preferred to continue with the name Biuletyn as being more in line with the content of mostly local community news rather than a full-scale broad-interest newspaper that the new name would suggest. Reader’s opinion was sought in regards to the title, but no further changes followed and the new name stayed.
New titles corresponded with changes of the official publisher. All numbers of the Komunikat (1950 – 1954) were published by the Polish Association. All four issues of the Biuletyn Polski were published by “Polish Organizations and Associations in New Zealand”. Then Wiadomości Polskie were published jointly by the Polish Association and the Polish Ex-soldiers Association (SPK). Finally, from the December 1955 issue, after SPK withdrew from the editorial office, the newspaper was published solely, again, by the Polish Association in New Zealand.
Although the period of inter-organizational co-publishing was relatively brief, lasting about 18 months only, it proved to be pivotal in shaping the style and character of the newspaper. The expanded volume, now regularly 6 to 8 pages, allowed it to supplement the coverage of local community social and cultural events with ‘letters to the editor’, items on Polish literature, history, but also news and articles obtained from Polish sources in the free world, particularly in the UK and America.
All this generated interest within the Polish society well beyond the Wellington area. The basic framework for the magazine was set, and with only minor changes, it is still successfully followed today.
Good cooperation with Polish chaplaincy and other organizations continues. Reports on their activities appear in every number and, on occasion, a news item or article supplied by them is published too.
For a while, SPK continued to issue their own, stand-alone Komunikat SPK, but in the end it decided to publish all their material in the pages of Wiadomości.
In recent years the Polish Embassy in Wellington has supported the paper financially and frequently supply news and articles to be published there.
By the mid-1960s the magazine grew to more than 20 pages per issue. A few multi-month issues in the early 1970s swelled to more than 40 pages. Since then, the number of pages per issue remains usually between 16 and 32.
In the 1990s to the early 2000s Wiadomości reprinted many articles from Polish language newspapers received either from Poland or from other countries with a sizable Polish immigrant population. Thus were the times, when the internet was still in its infancy yet, but news about shrugging off communist rule, reinstating democracy and the free market economy in Poland were eagerly sought after by readers.
In 2004 an internal review of the newspaper was conducted by the Association Executive Committee and re-publishing articles without copyright was phased out. The main focus of the printed material shifted back to local news and matters regarding activities of the Polish society in New Zealand.
A volunteer’s domain
The Polish Association Executive appoints the Editorial Committee, members of which are not paid for their work. There is also no money paid to authors of published articles. In this respect the newspaper has always been a volunteer’s domain.
In general, the title has not been profitable, but on the other hand, it was never a profit driven enterprise. Wiadomości has never had a price tag and copies have not been for sale as such. Members of the Association cover the cost of their copies by paying an annual membership subscription. For non-members a yearly subscription of the newspaper was of the same value as the Association’s membership. Usually, all those subscriptions did not meet paper, printing and distribution costs. Therefore, Wiadomości has always been subsidised by the publisher – namely the Polish Association.
The 1955 withdrawal of SPK from its co-publishing role was a result of the inability to subsidise the newspaper due to financial constraints faced by this organization at the time. The circulation was too small to make it profitable. On the other hand, the number of Polish people living in the country was never sufficient to attract commercial advertising. Some Polish businesses paid for their ads and there is always room for ads in every issue, but the revenue from them remains miniscule. Those financial impediments, together with changes in the editorial staff applying different editing styles, were the dominant force behind a fascinating change of the newspaper’s appearance, frequency of publishing, size and printing techniques throughout the years.
Until the end of 1958 Wiadomości Polskie was a monthly magazine. From 1959 some numbers were bi-monthly and from the mid-1960s, particularly in the 1970s there were also numbers spanning more than two months. In some years only four issues were released. Publishing less numbers per year was sometimes deliberate for the purpose of cost saving.
During the height of the magazine's popularity over 350 copies were printed. The cost of paper, printing, binding and distributing to the members and subscribers throughout New Zealand by post was a burden on the Association’s finances, especially in the years immediately following the purchase or renovation of the Association’s premises.
Archives
Currently the newspaper is prepared, edited and distributed in digital form, published officially on the Polish Association’s web-page. However, up to 2012 all the numbers were published as hard copies, printed on paper. Access to the old paper copies remains severely restricted by the fact that nearly all those hard copies were distributed to members and only a few spare copies were put aside and kept in the Association’s archives. None of the libraries run by
Polish Associations in various centres in New Zealand have collected the newspaper on a year-by-year basis. If anything, they kept just several odd numbers. Likewise, before 2012, just a few numbers were sent to the National Library of New Zealand. So, apart from possible private collections held and owned by long serving members of the Polish Association in New Zealand, only the Wellington Association’s archives contain sizable numbers of past copies.
Unfortunately, not all of them. Frequently, there is just one copy of a particular issue. The surviving copies are sometimes in poor condition. For all these reasons, an initiative of scanning and digitising the whole available collection of Wiadomości Polskie was supported by the Wellington Association’s Executive Committee in 2022.
Scanning project
Although the project started in Auckland in 2021, most of the scanning was done after access to the Association’s Archive was granted in 2022.
Nominal resolution of the scans was set for 300 dpi and 600 dpi for old and rare issues of the magazine. The scanned pages are saved as Jpg and Tiff files, then the whole number is converted to Pdf and Pdf-searchable files. Each number of Wiadomości Polskie is saved in its own folder and placed in a folder for a particular year. This way a clear, easy to follow directory of the digital archive of the paper was created.
Searchable pdf files enable search engines to look for specific names or phrases throughout the digital archive.
As mentioned earlier, the Archives of the Polish Association in Wellington contain most of the past numbers, however, there are also some gaps in their collection. Unfortunately, Wiadomości Polskie were not numbered. For this reason and the fact that many issues were published for more than one month, we cannot easily establish how many were actually published and therefore how many are missing. We can guess that overall, about 688 issues were published by the end of 2022. The Association archives contain about 630 numbers. This number includes recent digital copies held as pdf files only.
533 numbers have been scanned so far. About 170 of the early numbers were scanned in 600 dpi resolution.
There are probably about 58 numbers missing, mostly from the 1950s to 1970s.
The kindness and courtesy of Mr Michal Mendruń enabled us to scan over 20 numbers held in the Mendruń family collection which could not be found anywhere else.
Access to the digital archive can be granted by courtesy of the Polish Association in New Zealand (Wellington).
Jacek Drecki
WP Scanning Project Coordinator