Keith Newman (writer)

Keith Newman is a New Zealand author, freelance writer and producer. He has had five non-fiction titles published dealing with historical subjects including Māori prophet T. W. Ratana and the movement he founded, the early missionaries and their relationships with the Māori people and a history of the Internet in New Zealand.

Early years

Newman was raised in Feilding in the central North Island of New Zealand and trained as a reporter from the age of 17 working on newspapers in Palmerston North and Waipukurau before joining the old NZBC as a radio and TV journalist. He spent two and a half years in Sydney managing and promoting rock bands before returning to Palmerston North in the late 1970s to start entertainment magazine Get Up 'n Go.

In 1981 he joined the news staff at Radio 2XS in Palmerston North where he produced a number of radio documentaries. He moved to Auckland in 1984 to work as a sub-editor on a weekly newspaper then went on to work as a feature writer and sub editor with Suburban Newspapers in 1986 before joining the Auckland Sun in 1988.

Author

After 20 years of research Reed published his work Ratana Revisited – An Unfinished Legacy, the first work on the Ratana Church and movement for nearly 25 years. Two years later he was asked by Penguin, which took over Reed Publishing, to write a condensed and more focused version which was published as Ratana – The Prophet in 2009. Newman also wrote the article in Te Ara, the New Zealand Government online encyclopaedia, about the Ratana movement].

In between he was commissioned by InternetNZ to write the history of the Internet in New Zealand. The resulting book Connecting the Clouds – The Internet in New Zealand (Activity Press 2008) is also published as a wiki and available free under a Creative Commons license.

In 2009 Penguin published his book Bible & Treaty: Missionaries Among the Maori, currently in its second edition and the follow-up title Beyond Betrayal: Trouble in the Promised Land was released in September 2013.

Wordworx web and CDs

Newman has hosted one of the longest running free content sites in New Zealand, as the webmaster of the Wordworx site, and has been writing about telecommunications and technology since the dawn of the 1980s. Under the umbrella Wordworx he archives many of the articles and features he has written over the past 25-years, including the annual Digital lifestyle magazine Home Technology, distributed in hard copy format as a supplement to The Sunday Star-Times which he wrote and edited until 2012.

Newman also hosts articles on New Zealand music, and content from his rhythm 'n verse poetry CDs, Buzz Words from 1997 and Cleaning Out the Garage in 2002.

Rock from the edge

Newman has written produced and narrated over 20 programmes for Radio New Zealand National's Musical Chairs series, mainly dealing with pop and rock musicians from the period of the 1960s and 1970s, predominantly those who had recording success locally and toured offshore.

Awards

• sway.tech Hi-tech journalist of the year, PricewaterhouseCoopers hi-Tech Awards 2009
• New Zealand Radio Awards: Blerta Years, Radio New Zealand National, Best Produced Music Feature, 2007
• Best Magazine Feature Writer, IC&T, Qantas Media Awards 2004
• Journalist of the Year 2004, Telecommunications Users Association of New Zealand (TUANZ)

Books published

• Beyond Betrayal: Trouble in the Promised Land (Penguin 2013)
• Bible & Treaty: Missionaries Among the Maori (Penguin 2010)
• Ratana the Prophet, Raupo-Penguin (2009)
• Connecting the Clouds – the Internet in New Zealand, Activity Press / InternetNZ (2008)
• Ratana Revisited – An Unfinished Legacy (Raupo/Reed 2006)

Environmental action

Newman is also the spokesperson for the WOW (Walking on Water) lobby group. WOW is particularly concerned with coastal erosion in the Haumoana beach area where Newman lives.