cost of newsprint continued to climb, reaching at its peak £60 a ton which forced the newspaper to increase in price on 8 March 1920 to 2d a copy. Amalgamation As has been seen most of its Dunedin opposition papers were short lived, with only the Evening Star surviving until it merged with the ODT in 1975 forming a new company, Allied Press, and the ODT moved to the Evening Star Building (now the Allied Press Building) in Stuart Street in June 1977. The Evening Star ceased publication in November 1979 because its readership was declining. As a result, the Allied Press, now publishes the ODT and several smaller papers throughout New Zealand, including the Greymouth Star and the former The Lakes District and Central Otago News. On 5 January 1998 the ODT published for the first time on a new Goss International printing press; on the same day it introduced a new masthead reading simply "Otago Daily Times", marking Otago's 150th anniversary year of Pākehā settlement. Milestones 1861 – 15 November: first edition. 1881 – price dropped to one penny. 1898 – first linotype machines installed. They were supplied by the English Linotype Company following a visit by Fenwick in 1897 the United States and Britain to investigate suitable machines. 1900 – first photoengraving plant installed. 1949 – first full-time cartoonist employed. 1952 – November: the ODT became the first New Zealand metropolitan paper to print news rather than classified advertisements on the front page. 1955 – new general printing department inaugurated. 1956 – wire photographic equipment installed. 1961 – new enlarged format. 1966 – first full colour gravure pre-printing. 1978 – 13 and 20 October: no edition due to journalists' strike; first missed days of publication in 117 years. 1979 – November: Evening Star ceased publication; ODT size increased to compensate. 1980 – August: three separate editions published for first time, serving Dunedin city, North Otago, and Central/South Otago. 1981 – July: first computerised publishing. 1987 – December: change to coloured masthead, simplified to "Otago Daily Times" with no "the". 1988 – November: new typeface and formatting. 1990 – June: first full-process colour printing. Policies and personages While having politically conservative views during Fenwick's long tenure, the ODT was active in many campaigns for social reform, none more important than the exposure of sweat shop following the sermon by Presbyterian minister Rutherford Waddell in October 1888 "On the