Table of Contents
From the Navy’s Deck to the Editor’s Desk: The Michael de Hamel Story
For almost four decades, Michael de Hamel has been the face, and the pen, and the camera, behind The Akaroa Mail. But before he took the reins of Banks Peninsula’s oldest newspaper, his path wound through photography, adventure tourism, and a stint weighing up careers as different as law and hospitality.
A Photographer on the Move
De Hamel’s working life began behind a camera, based in Dunedin. It was there he faced his first big fork in the road: build a career as a photographer in London, or throw himself into large-scale adventure tourism photography closer to home. He chose the latter, and the choice took him the length of the country.
One assignment saw him drive to Invercargill and spend two days at sea aboard a Navy vessel. Soon after, he was in Auckland working a boat launch before travelling on to Whangarei, two nights in Auckland bookending the trip, before heading back to Dunedin four days later.
The work was rewarding, but de Hamel kept running into the same frustration: the photographs he supplied were often paired with poorly written copy, and the practicalities of coordinating shoots across difficult landscapes were a constant headache. Rather than simply hand over images and walk away, he started getting involved in developing the written content himself, the first step toward publishing.
Choosing a Direction
That shift from photography into text pushed de Hamel toward publishing more broadly. At one point he was weighing up three quite different careers, receptionist, lawyer, or publisher, before publishing won out.
Family ties to Banks Peninsula, including time spent at Stony Bay, meant Akaroa already felt familiar. So when an opportunity to take over an ailing local publishing business surfaced around 1982–83, it wasn’t a huge leap. A chance meeting in Christchurch, visiting a cousin, introduced him to Alison, who had a perspective on taking over the Akaroa Mail. Two years later, the call came: the paper’s then-owner wanted to sell, and it was time to talk terms.
Building the Mail
De Hamel’s plan was pragmatic: print in Ashburton to cut production costs, and switch the paper from paid to free distribution to rebuild circulation. It worked. What started at around 1,500 copies grew to 4,000, extending coverage to Lyttelton and Mt Herbert. Today, print runs climb as high as 10,000 in the summer months, when Banks Peninsula’s population swells with visitors and cruise ship traffic through Akaroa.
Public reporting corroborates the timeline: de Hamel took over the paper in 1985, restoring editorial standards after a rocky patch in the early 1980s when the Mail had leaned on stock photography and seen a decline in quality, including a two-month suspension in publication before he stepped in.
Photographer, Journalist, Publisher
It’s a career arc that runs from photojournalist to editor to publisher, and one that’s kept de Hamel personally involved in every part of the operation, from accounts and reporting to ad sales, sub-editing, and even the occasional delivery round himself, as he’s described in industry interviews over the years.
Nearly four decades on, The Akaroa Mail remains a rare thing in New Zealand media: a small, independent, locally owned newspaper still thriving in an era when most of its peers have been swallowed by larger groups.