Women’s Newspaper In Norfolk Island

Manawatu Times, Volume 60, Issue 133, 8 June 1935, Page 14

Women’s Newspaper In Norfolk Island

Publishing day for the Norfolk Island Times is a very busy day for tho editor. It is also a very busy day for tho advertising manager, cable editor, social writer, sub-editor, and general manager—all of which posts aro held by one capable person, Mrs ,T. B. Bruce (states the “Sydney Morning Herald”). The paper has a circulation of 300 copies a week.

The writer continues: To the dwellers in a big city it might seem that a small island of eleven hundred inhabitants could not offer much scope for a newspaper, but it certainly offers as much as its enterprising proprietor can comfortably handle once a week. She has to go and get her own advertisements, attend all sporting fixtures, social events of importance, do her own court reporting, go through a heavy batch of overseas papers for the purpose of injecting overseas news into her pages, keep an eye on fashions, known where to put her linger on a good recipe or household hint—and be sufficiently businesslike to collect her own ndverfiseing .revenue and attend to her own accounts. ILer staff consists of the artist, who cuts any stencilled designs necessary for advertisements, and a ‘‘printer’s devil,” the lad who “washes up” the machine on which the paper is duplicated, and turns the handle to run off the copies. Paper for the production goes over from New Zealand or Sydney, as do ink supplies. The paper varies in size according to the news, but is usually 24 foolscap-size pages. It is stapled together by the “printer’s devil” and delivered by him to all parts of the island.

Publishing day is Wednesday, so that if news of special significance occurs on Tuesday or early oil Wednesday a “stop press” edition has to bo run. “Life on tho island isn’t very exciting, but it has moments,” says Mrs. Bruce. I ‘l find it quite exciting enough to provide mo with news. Then, too, I cut out of overseas papers references made to Norfolk Island and reprint them. Not that ono often find many references to our littlo bit of tho Pacific in oversea papers, but occasionally thcro is something.” Mrs Bruce, who has lived ou Norfolk Island for six years, lias been the proprietor of the paper for two years now. She says she had no special qualification for the job except that she had had a short training in journalism before her marriage. The paper was in danger of lapsing, and slio simply thought that it was too good a thing to let slip, so she acquired it herself, and is still carrying on.

“Norfolk Island looks forward to its paper, and I like to think I am doing something of a little value to the community. It pays its way, though it doesn’t make vast profits,” sho said.