Star Media
news publishing company based in Christchurch, New Zealand
Star Media, formerly known as Mainland Press and Mainland Media, was a Christchurch-based media company that was a subsidiary of the New Zealand media company Allied Media (formerly Allied Press). Notable assets include the Christchurch community newspaper The Star, the South Island lifestyle magazine Style, and national magazines Kiwi Gardener, Kiwi Gardener Quarterly and Rugby News. Star Media also runs several Christchurch events including the City 2 Surf and the Home and Leisure Show. In late July 2025, Allied Press and Star Media merged into one brand called Allied Media.
History
Independent era, 2007–2018
Star Media was the trading name of CSEPS Holdings Limited, which was founded as Mainland Press Limited on 26 March 2007. As of March 2024, the company's directors are Pier and Charlotte Smulders, who also owned the company prior to its acquisition by Allied Press.
By 2011, Mainland Press was publishing the Mainland Press newspaper, the Bay Harbour News, Best Motorbuys, Buy Sell & Exchange and CC magazine and websites. Following the 2011 Christchurch earthquake, CTV relocated to the Mainland Press headquarters with the two companies collaborating to promote local news coverage and cross-media sales. On 15 September 2011, the Mainland Press newspaper launched a weekend edition.
By February 2012, Mainland Press had acquired and relaunched the national lifestyle magazine Older & Boulder, which was published in Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch with a national circulation of 160,000.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Star Media” is news publishing company based in Christchurch, New Zealand. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Star, Media and news, not as a finished interpretation.
Why this record matters
The phrase “news publishing company based in Christchurch, New Zealand” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.
Chronology, provenance and viewpoint should be read together before a broad social or political interpretation is accepted. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jun 15, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q130641257. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 2025, 2007, 2018 and 2024.
Institutional narratives can privilege the records that survived while minimizing voices that were never formally collected. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
Compare institutional narratives with records created by participants and affected communities. Dates and formal titles are useful anchors, but not substitutes for context.
- Event chronology
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Contemporary correspondence, government or organizational records, oral histories and cited historical scholarship.
Three-step research path
- Establish the record: confirm the title “Star Media”, its source revision and the description used here.
- Expand the search: follow Star Media primary sources, Star Media archive and Star research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
- Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.
Questions for further research
- Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Star Media”?
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Search terms from this dossier
This entry incorporates text from “Star Media” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.