NEWSPAPER’S GROWTH

Manawatu Standard, Volume LI, Issue 117, 18 April 1931, Page 9

NEWSPAPER’S GROWTH

SYDNEY HERALD’S CENTENARY. FOUNDED IN INTERESTING TIMES. COMMEMORATION TO-DAY. (United Press Association.—By Eleetrio Telegrap h. —Copyright.) Received April 18, 8.35 a.m. SYDNEY, April 18. The Sydney Morning Herald marks its centenary this morning with a sixty-eight-page newspaper reviewing the early history and progress of this journal and of the State. A fascimile of the first copy, The Sydney Herald, April 18, 1831, which is inset, contains some quaint advertisements, news items, and striking photographs of four generations of the Fairfax proprietary, together with pictures and woodcuts of the coaching and bushranging days, the primitive methods of travel, local gatherings and the opening of the first railways, which are accompanied by pen pictures of the growth of commerce and industry. In addition, a magnificent illustration of the almost-completed harbour bridge makes the centenary issue, of which 450,000 copies have been printed, a noteworthy contribution to Australian journalism. THE EARLY DAYS. They were exciting days when the Sydney Herald was established, in April, 1831, and deevloped later as the. Sydney Morning Herald by Mr John Fairfax. The original proprietors were Frederick Michael Stokes, William AlcGarvie, and Ward Stephens. The Herald was commenced as a weekly paper, with the Rev. John McGarvie as the first leader writer, according to an address delivered in Sydney recently by the editor of the Harald, Mr C. Brunsdon Fletcher. In 1838 Mr John Fairfax and his family reached Port Jackson. Air Fairfax obtained a position at the Australian Subscription Library. Being a practical printer, he took a keen interest in the development and difficulties of the Herald, more particularly as the strain of management was telling on the health of the proprietor, Air Stokes. In 1841 Air Fairfax and Air Charles Kemp united in the purchase of the Herald, which they obtained from Air Stokes on favourable terms. However, it again proved that dual control was not the ideal for an independent newspaper under the extraordinary conditions of life then existing in New South Wales. In 1853 Air John Fairfax became sole proprietor, and the paper started on the second stage of its progress. The value of provincial journalism in England was illustrated by this development, as John Fairfax, before leaving for Sydney, had been a newspaper proprietor in Warwickshire.