compositor had left for the gold fields, which required Farjeon (who had trained as a printer's devil and then as a compositor) to step and assist in the publication. In 1862 the Evening News was launched as an afternoon rival and by 1863 had achieved a circulation of 1,000, but it closed the next year. It is not to be confused with the Evening Star which launched on 1 May 1863 as a daily afternoon newspaper (selling for a penny) and which was the longest-lived rival to the ODT. Impact of the telegraph Vogel identified that the completion of telegraph lines as the country was opened up gave the daily ODT an advantage The completion of a telegraph line from Campbelltown later Bluff) to Dunedin in August 1862 in particular allowed the ODT to gain quicker access to international news as Bluff was the first New Zealand port of call for ships carrying English and Australian newspapers before travelling up the coast to Dunedin. Vogel arranged for summaries of the foreign news to be prepared by an employee of the Argus newspaper in Melbourne, put on a mail ship and then dispatched by telegraph to the ODT when it arrived in Bluff. When the telegraph line reached Hokitika, he also arranged for international news arriving upon a ship to also be dispatched from there. Originally, he reserved the information of the sole use of the ODT. Once a telegraph line was opened across Cook Strait, Vogel made his telegrams available for sale to Wellington and soon after other North Island newspapers. This ability for a daily to more quickly convey the latest news to the public gave the ODT an advantage over a weekly newspaper. As a result, Cutten's and Vogel's own Otago Witness declined in importance and slowly became a digest of reprints from its daily sister and original material oriented towards country readers. The Otago Colonist which had previously been a weekly responded by becoming a daily in July 1862. Its owners launched in early January 1863 a new daily newspaper called the Daily Telegraph and reverted the Otago Colonist to a weekly with a change of name to the Weekly Colonist. This made Dunedin the first New Zealand city to have two daily newspapers until both the Daily Telegraph and Weekly Colonist closed on 9 April 1864. Twelve weeks later the Otago Daily Mail was launched but