An Interesting Birthday.

Press, Volume LXVI, Issue 19917, 2 May 1930, Page 14

An Interesting Birthday.

Good Friday, we are reminded by the Sydney Morning Herald, was its ninety-ninth birthday, so that it has now entered on its hundredth year. That in itself is a fact of some interest and importance, since the Herald is now the oldest of existing Australian newspapers. The point however is that it has lasted longer than any other Australian paper, and become richer and more influential than any other, without ever altering its stride to keep pace with its fevered contemporaries. Although it is difficult to go back from its present size and form to the four small pages of four columns each (costing 7d) which made their first appearance on April 18th, 1831, and difficult to go back from 200,000 subscribers to 200, the Herald is essentially to-day the same journal as it has been throughout its whole career'—and the best proof of that is the fact that what its enemies say of it now they said fifty years ago, and have always said in more or less the same terms. The foolish thought when the "new" journalism arrived in Sydney that the Herald also would have to become new or decline. It has remained itself—stodgy to those who like froth, and grandmotherly to those who like impudence, but never charged with neglecting the news or with perverting it. Sydney may. be as gay as Paris and as lawless as Chicago. The Herald has remained sober, accurate, dignified, cautious, and on these foundations has made both a newspaper tradition and an enormous newspaper fortune.