BORDER PRESS DEAL

Otago Daily Times, Issue 27510, 3 October 1950, Page 5

BORDER PRESS DEAL

Former Christchurch Man GROUP IN SCOTLAND Rec. 8 p.m. LONDON, Oct. 2. Captain J. I. M. Smail, M.C., a son of the late Mr James Smail and Mrs Smail, of Christchurch, and proprietor of the Tweeddaie Press, Berwick-on-Tweed, completed his second Border newspaper deal in 12 months by purchasing the weekly, the Southern Reporter, at Selkirk. Captain Smail last year bought the Kelso Border Mail, one of Scotland’s oldest weeklies, and amalgamated it with its chief opposition, the Kelso Chronicle, under the name of the Border Chronicle and Mail. This ended a 100-year-old feud between the two Kelso papers. Other papers in the Tweeddaie group are the Berwick Advertiser and the Berwickshire Advertiser.

The editor of the Southern Reporter is Mr David Mackie, one of Scotland’s best-known journalists, author and poet. With the acquisition of the Southern Reporter, the group has a net sale of 22,000. The paper has been published for 95 years and the press it owns is reported to have printed the proclamation of Bonnie Prince Charlie’s claims to the Throne.

Captain Smail, who is 28. is the seventh generation of the family to own the Tweeddaie Press. He went overseas as a private in the 2nd New Zealand Expeditionary Force and served in the Western Desert and Italian campaigns, winning the Military Cross at Cassino. He was promoted second-lieutenant in the field and was the first Eighth Army man to cross the River Po. Captain Smail was seconded to the Royal Military College at Sandhurst. While in Britain he i?:et a cousin, the late Major H. A. Smail, then proprietor of the Tweeddaie Press, and after demobilisation in New Zealand joined him in Berwick. Captain Smail studied at Heriot Watt College, Edinburgh.