Before NZTODAY
Someone recently told me they were enjoying reading back issues of NZTODAY and how it was a totally different magazine then. I think they were reading issue #35 and I responded by saying that it was even more different if they had a look at the first dozen issues.
I can’t put a precise date on the first issue of NZTODAY but it was early 2000s and the first four issues were actually called SE Magazine – ‘SE’ standing for Special Edition.
At that stage Bruce Mountain and current editor Robyn Mountain worked for me on the DRIVER magazine, so the history is long for all of us on NZTODAY.
I had been approached by a major corporate company to see if I could provide them with a magazine for their clients. They liked the style of my motoring magazine DRIVER and wanted something similar, but without the heavy focus on cars.
At that stage I was travelling extensively, attending new car launches all over the world and driving new cars around New Zealand, so I adapted some of those car launch stories and NZ destination articles, added some political comment, book reviews and an editorial and called it (DRIVER Magazine) SE Special Edition.
The feature story in the first issue was about a trip to New Plymouth and Taranaki. Issue two saw me go to Denmark and Sweden where I got up at dawn to find the statue of Hans Christian Anderson’s Little Mermaid and, like seeing the Mona Lisa for the first time, I was surprised at how small it was.
In the first half dozen issues of SE Special Edition I did a story on male strippers and another on a Robbie Williams’ concert.
was so well received, I decided to trust my judgement and cut it free from and it became .
