National daily The Australian turned 60 this week, with its 93-year-old owner giving printed newspapers perhaps 15 more years to extinction.

One wondered whether that was for his own mastheads (perhaps even his personal involvement!) or the still-popular reality of print itself. Clearly the publisher’s will would be a factor.

For the celebration, cue pictures of the white-shirted, waistcoated founder making last-minute changes to a page proof for a process neither the inventors of movable type (sorry Alan Howe) nor today’s printers would have recognised.

A good opportunity however, to recognise the technical challenges which were overcome with the origination of the paper in Canberra in 1964, and the distribution of “flong” matrices to multiple print centres around the country. The stories have been told of editions being delayed because of fog, notorious in the national capital, and eventually overcome by moving production to News Corp Australia’s current headquarters in Holt Street, Sydney.

Multiple interviews have seen Murdoch talking with editor-at-large Paul Kelly and Sky chief Paul Whittaker, and a rare dialogue with son-and-heir Lachlan.

Given that he died in 1952, much has also been made of the contribution of Rupert’s father Keith, whose ambition a national daily apparently had been.

While working for and eventually leading the Melbourne Herald business, he assembled and personally acquired a number of newspaper assets, of which only the Adelaide News was to survive to be passed on to his son.

Today’s publishing empire dates from then, and it is of course Rupert’s drive which has built today’s network of mastheads and production facilities – plus the myriad of other associated businesses which will sustain News long after print, and no doubt The Australian, have been forgotten.

Howe quotes George Calvi – who had joined the paper’s early production team – that The Australian was “a newspaper ahead of its time” in technical terms, and describes the 1964 launch as “akin to scaling Everest with antique equipment”. Memories of their driving “plates” (or perhaps flongs?) to catch the train at Yass, and if that connection was missed, race it to Junee, to begin interstate production from Sydney. “To anyone else but Keith’s son, it would have seemed preposterous,” says Howe.

Anniversaries much more notable than that of the The Australian used to be commonplace. Many of the country’s papers have been in existence for more than a century; and many more of that age have had their stories truncated in the last five years.

News’ network of national production centres too, is now perhaps at its most complete and sophisticated, and the next developments we hear of are likely to be of closures and consolidation.

Good therefore to have this opportunity to hear the story of The Australian from its healthy-looking nonagenarian owner, and wish it ‘a Happy Birthday”!

Peter Coleman

Pictured: Rupert Murdoch with the paper’s first front page; headlines from its 60 years; Murdoch with Sky’s Paul Whittaker; editorial staff pose with a tram signwritten for the anniversary