A brief history of the Beacon

By Kerrie Subritzky

Many of our readers will be aware of the Beacon’s history and watched its progress over the past three-and-a-half years since its first issue in June 2016. However, as we have recently welcomed New Lynn and Avondale to our readership, I thought it’s high time we introduced ourselves properly.

The Beacon was formerly Newstalk Blockhouse Bay, and was started by Brom Breetvelt from Words Communications. It had been serving the population of Blockhouse Bay for about 21 years before John and I took it over. We renamed it Beacon Blockhouse Bay as we felt it would only be a matter of time before NewsTalk ZB took issue with the name (despite Brom having it first!)

While we were thinking of a new name, my dad Geoff Brebner, who grew up in Avondale, mentioned that when he was a teenager in the fifties there was a newspaper called The Avondale Advance and Blockhouse Bay Beacon. Blockhouse Bay Beacon seemed like the perfect fit for us and so it was.

As we expanded our little paper into New Lynn and Avondale, we decided it was time to just be the Beacon, as we want all our readers to feel that this is their local paper. It’s going to take time to make the community connections in the new part of our circulation, and that’s where we need your help.

We believe a local printed publication like the Beacon is one of the foundations of a strong and connected community. Reading stories about regular people just like us, keeping up with local events and having a publication that the public truly can contribute to is important. And “online” just doesn’t cut it. There’s an integrity about print that just doesn’t exist online.

The Beacon is all about community and our aim is to tell the stories of our neighbourhood. In years to come we’d like people to be able to look back through our many editions and see snapshots of life as it was for us then. As a monthly publication we can’t really be ‘first with the news’, but we can tell the stories of everyday people, and keep you informed of what’s happening in the community.

To that end I wanted to take this opportunity to reach out to our readers, both familiar and new, and invite you to let me know what’s happening in your part of the community. So many of you are involved in interesting stuff; clubs and organisations, schools, sports teams and the like. We’d like to hear from you, and tell your stories in the Beacon.

In fact, in the February edition we are planning a clubs and organisations feature to showcase the opportunities locals have to get involved in something. If you’d like your organisation to be part of this, contact me at kerrie@bhb.nz.
​
You can also go on my monthly email list to stay updated with when to get your ideas in to me.
​
Kerrie Subritzky