It was almost a throwaway line. “The geographic barriers that you enjoy today are going to be broken down,” Brian McCarthy warned country newspaper proprietors when they gathered in November last year to celebrate the centenary of the Victorian Country Press Association (writes Rod Kirkpatrick).
McCarthy, managing director of Rural Press Ltd, 1994-2007, and chief executive officer of Fairfax Media, 2008-10, was thinking particularly of the rollout of the National Broadband Network. In fact, however, the “geographic barriers” have been gradually breaking down over the past 40 years.
The erosion began when Australia’s regional daily newspapers spent many millions of dollars during a dozen years or so from 1968 (Burnie was the first), converting from letterpress printing and hot-metal composition to web-offset printing and computerised typesetting.
The cost of the new equipment and the significantly better production results meant that each daily generally became the site of a centralised printery that churned out its own paper as well those smaller papers formerly printed on antiquated letter presses in surrounding towns. It was the snapping of a geographic link between the towns, such as Taree, Chinchilla, Horsham, Home Hill and Port Augusta, and where their papers were printed, who printed them and who set the copy deadlines.
And now in the second decade of the 21st century, the geographic barriers have become significantly weaker, even without taking into account the ubiquitous internet. Few regional dailies are printed on their own press and so the non-dailies they formerly printed have often been transferred to an even more distant printing location.
Nobody put it better than R.A. Moncrieff, a Toowoomba ‘Chronicle’ printer who, after nearly 50 years in the printing trade, warned in 1980 that although the wind of change had often swept through the newspaper world, this time it was different. “This time it is freighted with the seeds of destruction – of the precious craft pride and the bright sweetness of the spirit that sustains it.”
Graham Gardiner was told he had “a job for life” when he started a five-year printing apprenticeship at Bundaberg’s ‘News-Mail’ in 1963 with 34 production-room colleagues, one of whom was his father, Noel. Noel Gardiner enjoyed “a job for life” there, 1936-84, as had Noel’s own father, Jack, 1908-56. When Graham Gardiner retired in November 2007, there were only five production room employees and he reflected that many of his colleagues had not had “a job for life”.
Brian (‘Bud’) Cash and Bruce Devlin both had jobs for life at the ‘Daily Mercury’, Mackay, although Cash did spend four years at the ‘Coonabarabran Times’ and in Sydney early in his career. But the trade they entered in 1952-53 changed dramatically over the years as the technology made obsolete the old skills. “It took a lot of the artistry out of the job,” Cash said. He felt like he was losing his job, as “they gradually took this off you and that off you”. By the time they finished in 1996, Cash and Devlin did not enjoy their jobs.
Many printers have either changed careers or changed their town of residence as APN has closed newspaper presses progressively over the past 13 years: Maryborough (May, 1998), Warwick (October, 2001), Ipswich (November, 2006), and in recent months, Bundaberg (August 20), and Mackay (September 10). Lismore was replaced by Ballina in August 2008.
APN, which publishes ten Queensland dailies, now produces them from only three print sites: Yandina, Toowoomba and Rockhampton. Yandina produces the Sunshine Coast, Gympie, Bundaberg and Fraser Coast dailies, as well as the Saturday edition of the Ipswich paper; Toowoomba produces the Toowoomba and Warwick dailies and the weekday issues of the Ipswich paper; and Rockhampton produces the Rockhampton, Gladstone and Mackay dailies. In NSW, APN prints its four northern rivers dailies – Coffs Harbour*, Grafton, Lismore and the Tweed* – at Ballina.
Outside of Sydney and Melbourne, Fairfax Media operates only 13 print sites across Australia: Beresfield, Dubbo, North Richmond, Tamworth, (NSW); Canberra (ACT); Ballarat, Albury/Wodonga (Vic); Ormiston, Mount Isa (Qld); Murray Bridge (SA); Launceston, Burnie (Tas); and Mandurah (WA).
In some instances, the emotional connection between a town and its newspaper has been further weakened, some would argue, by the establishment of centralised subbing units, where the sub-editing of stories and the designing of pages have been removed from the local paper to a central location.
Yet, Max Tomlinson, when he was general manager of North Queensland Newspapers (1998-2003), abolished the sub hub in Townsville and shifted the subbing back to papers such as the ‘Northern Miner’, Charters Towers. Tomlinson wanted editors to be “breathing the same air as the townspeople they served”.
He had to battle to convince News Limited’s board to approve the change. He argued that distance and distinctive communities in north Queensland meant that small-town papers needed their own editor. “I’ve seen examples where the subs in head office have actually over-ruled the wishes of the locally based editor because ‘we know best’,” he said.
APN has gone a long way to combatting such criticisms with its centralised subbing unit, Centro, at Maroochydore. Each daily has its own Centro design sub and text sub; they are centralised ‘localists’. They belong to a ‘pod’ under the guidance of a chief sub. Each pod is responsible for two dailies. Each daily retains its own locally based editor who is entirely responsible for local content.
When the Bundaberg and Mackay print centres closed in August and September, most of the 40 printers suddenly found they did not have “a job for life”, well, certainly not in their own city. Fifteen had the opportunity of transferring to another APN site, but only five (four from Mackay and one from Bundaberg) did so.
The two dailies – Bundaberg’s ‘NewsMail’ and Mackay’s ‘Daily Mercury’ – both announced in May that the print centres would close. When the presses stopped rolling in Bundaberg, the ‘NewsMail’ devoted five pages to the “end of a long era”.
The pages of the ‘Daily Mercury’, however, were silent when the Mackay press stopped. Your columnist, armed with camera and notebook, joined the printers on the final night. We shared pizza and soft drink before the Goss Community press, with four reel stands armed, began “thundering out” the final section of the 96-page Saturday edition.
Adrian Holzwart, the print manager, was at the end of 25 years with APN (and its predecessor, PNQ). He had become an apprentice printer at the ‘Central Queensland News’, Emerald, in 1986, choosing to move to Mackay in 1989 when APN closed the Emerald print site. This time, because of family arrangements, he would not move, even though “printing has been my passion”.
Three pre-press employees – Bob Ward, Richard McGuire and Peter Molloy – with a total of 139 years’ experience took redundancy packages. Molloy, production manager for 11 years, had joined the ‘Mercury’ in November 1966 as an apprentice hand and machine compositor.
He recalls separate investigations being made in 2003 and 2007 of the possibility of shifting the printing to Rockhampton, with both giving their thumbs down to the idea. The copy deadline for the ‘Mercury’ is now 7pm because the paper has to be on the press in Rockhampton by 8pm. “The ‘Mercury’ is just another product there,” Molloy says. “They have to print Emerald, Biloela, Gladstone and Rockhampton, too.”
Now there is no Friday night sport in Saturday’s ‘Mercury’ and there are no mid-week Lotto results in the next morning’s paper. You have to visit the paper’s website for that.
* As this issue was being prepared, APN announced that it would turn its ‘Tweed Daily News’ into a Saturday weekly and the ‘Coffs Coast Advocate’ into a biweekly free, supplementing them with improved digital sites.
• You can contact Rod Kirkpatrick at email rkhistory3@bigpond.com
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