NEW ZEALAND JOURNALISM.

Otago Witness, Issue 3755, 2 March 1926, Page 15

NEW ZEALAND JOURNALISM.

PRESSMEN IN CONFERENCE. The annual conference of the New Zealand branch of the Empire Press Union ■was held ou Wednesday, when the chairman .(Sir George Fenwick) presided. There were about 30 members present. ANNUAL REPORT. The annual report staled: Your committee has pardonable pride in recording tho splendid success of the visit made to the Dominion by the delegates from Great Britain, Canada, and the other parts of the Empire that were represented. The only regrettable fact in this memorable visit was that time did not permit of tho delegates visiting tho South Island. No one regrets this more than the chairman of the New Zealand branch, through whose instrumentality while he was in England the visit to the Dominion was arranged through the president and Council of the Union. It was, however, quite impossible to allot more than 11 days to the New Zealand visit. This was confined to the North Island, and was an unqualified success from beginning to end. New Zealand pressmen will hold in happy remembrance the many interesting functions at which they and their distinguished visitors met in friendly acquaintanceship. With no less satisfaction and pleasure will the visitors recall the interesting tour they made through fertile sections of the North Island and the valuable information they gained of Dominion industries and social fife. Your committee lakes this opportunity of recording its grateful thanks to the Government for the ready and generous assistance it gave in making the visit of the delegates successful in every way. s readiness to help was actively seconded by the Railways Board and the Tourist Department, and the various Government officials who in one way or another were associated with the tour of the party also contributed much to the comfort of tho visitors. The chairman of the New Zealand branch and Messrs Horton, Leys, and Dinwiddie, who were elected as delegates to the conference, report that they were impressed with the completeness of the ar angements, not only for the holding of the conference itself, but for a very elaborate tour through the whole of the States of tho Commonwealth. The Australian branch of the union has secured the cordial co-operation of the Federal and the • -rious State Governments. and the result was that the visitors had all possible comfort in the way of travelling facilities by rail and motor oars, while the conference in Melbourne was opened by the Governor-General, Lord, Forster, and was also attended by the Governor of Victoria, Lord Stradbrooke, and the Federal Prime Minister, Mr Bruce, all of whom delivered addresses of an informative and valuable character. The opening ceremony of the conference was presided over by Mr J. 0. Fairfax, chairman of the Australian section. Viscount Burnham was unanimously reelected president of the union, and there was a very large attendance of delegates. The agenda contained the headings of a great amount of business, of which the cable news services, broadcasting, and wireless matters formed the principal items of purely newspaper interest. Beyond these, subjects of supreme Imperial importance were considered, such as the problem of migration from Great Britain to the dominions, inter-imperial trade, and air communications. They were all fully discussed, and necessary resolutions passed. It was decided that the next conference should be held in England in the summer of 1930. Your committee has great pleasure in bearing testimony to the valuable help given by Mr L. J. Berry, the secretary of the Newspaper Proprietors’ Association, in the carrying out of the arrangements for the New Zealand tour of the delegates. His duties were heavy and arduous, and combined with the good work performed by the committees set up in Wellington and Auckland, everything ran smoothly, and our distinguished visitors at the close of the tour bore generous testimony to the enjoyable time they had spent in the Dominion. It may be of interest to mention the readiness with which members and associates subscribed the funds necessary for efficiently carrying out the New Zealand tour. Papers of all classes promptly responded to the appeal for the necessary funds, apd to this extent lightened Mr Berry’s arduous duties. The New Zealand section now numbers 13 members and 52 associates, and the hearty support it has given to the union was suitably acknowledged by the visiting officials. It is gratifying to the committee that the membership has kept up so satisfactorily, and the committee feels that its connection with so powerful a body is of great benefit to its members from an Imperial as well as a local standpoint.

It is with very sincere pleasure the committee extends its congratulations to Sir Henry Brett on the Knighthood that was conferred on him in the New Year honours list. Not only was the honour well deserved by reason of his leading position in the newspaper life of the Dominion for more than half a century, but also because of his public services in the city in which he has passed so large a part of his life. The balance sheet for the year shows £lOl was received from subscriptions; expenses for the year were £lO lCs 9d: and there remains at credit £9O 3s 3d. The committee desires to draw attention to the fact that the smn of £2B, comprising three members and 13 associates’ subscriptions, is outstanding, and requests that those who have not yet paid will let the secretary have their subscriptions at an early date. The committe regrets to have to record the death of Mr William McCullough, of the Thames Star, an old member of the union, and one of New Zealand’s representatives of the Rress Congress of the World at Honolulu in 1924. CHAIRMAN’S ADDRESS.

In his address the Chairman said that the past year had been a memorable one for the New Zealand section of the union,

owing to the visit paid to the Dominion by the overseas delegates to the third conference of the union, which was opened in Melbourne on September 2D last. Great interest attached to that visit, for not many members of the New Zealand branch had had an opportunity of meeting the prominent newspaper men anti women who made up the large party of delegates. The names of some of the best-known of the visitors had been household words in the English-speaking world for many years, and it was doubly interesting to Dominion members to be brought into personal contact with those who had so ably doue their part in building up the powerfuU journalistic union, to which all present were proud to belong. And while it gave the New Zealand press such pleasure to meet their more widely-known confreres, it was no less a source of pleasure to and interest to the latter to get into personal touch with men and women of the Dominion's pressland and to study the papers with which they were connected. The speaker said that the visitors formed a very high opinion of their new acquaintances, and the result had been that many true friendships between delegates and newspaper people of the countries visited had been formed. Through the march of science in its application to electric communication between the many parts of tho Empire, whether it bo in tho air, or by the cables that rest on the bed of the great seas, the component parts of the Empire had been brought into closer touch as the years had passed. Sir George said that they had to recognise tho wonderful development of air transport within the past two or three years, which would make it possible ere long for their kith and kin of the'Uld Land to visit them in rapid flight through space. “It is the personal touch,” he said, “the clasp of hand in hand, the spoken word of pleasant companionship, the business discussions, and the interchange of thought that tell more, perhaps than anything else in consolidating the inter-depend-ent interests of our widely-scattered Empire.” these recurring conferences of the Press Union were factors of great value in dis cussing questions of vital import bearing on the welfare of the Empire, and even the smallest paper in New Zealand had its responsibilities and had to play its part in educating its readers in that patriotic spirit which in its many ramifications made for the common good. “The Imperial Press Union has, I am firmly convinced,” said the speaker, “done much to raise the status of the Empire’s pi ess, high as that may have been previously, and every one of our members, be his paper great or small, has every reason to feel that he is engaged in a valuable community service, quite apart from any material advantage that falls to his share as a business man. The late Lord Northclift’e very aptly expressed his view of the value of the Empire Press Union when he said of its conference that it not only ‘put up the British press 30 *ier cent, in the estimation of the public, but 50 per cent, in its own.’ ” “The recent Melbourne Conference and tour of the delegates,” he continued, “did much to awake interest in matters of vital import to the Empire’s welfare', and while the divergent interests of the Old Land and of the new caused discussions at conference and at public gatherings throughout the tour, there was at bottom the spirit of friendship ’ strongly in evidence in t..e practical work of consolidating Empire interests. The great problem of migration from Great Britain to the dominions, and particularly to Australia, naturally became prominent in the discussions, and while there wer- on one or two occasions, speeches by Australians more or less pronounced in their opposition, it could not be questioned that there was a widespread feeling in the Commonwealth that means would have to l devised whereby her vast spaces might be peopled, and also that some reasonable basis of agreement on this problem would ultimately be arrived at.” So far as New Zealand was concerned, any difficulties that might have existed had been overcome, for there was now a moderate stream of immigrants under the nominated system and through the agency of the admirable Fiock House and other schemes, that was helping to increase the population The annual report of the committee, he said, paid a just tribute to the good work done by the secretary of the Newspaper Proprietors' Association, Mr L. J. Berry, in connection with the tour of Empire delegates He had had charge of the arrangements of the tour, and the speaker said he would like tc add his personal tribute to the admirable service rendered. Appreciation of assistance given by the Bailways Board and the Tourist Department in making the tour a success was also expressed. The visitors left with the pleasantest recollections of the Dominion and its people. The membership of the New Zealand section of the union continued to be well maintained and he did not doubt that small inc-ftases would be manifest year by year. Members would be gratified to know that Lord Burnham and his council looked upon the New Zealand membership as evidence that the Dominion press appreciated the good work the governing body hod done in securing reductions of cable rates, and otherwise promoting tho interests of the press. The watchful care and energy of the council had undoubtedly been of great service to the press of the Empire. There was, for instance, the watchfulness in respect to the. position of Imperial wireless, and the important question of broadcasting. Dealing with the present position of wire loss anti tho contract enterod into between the Imperial Government and the Marconi Company, Sir George made some interesting references to the work of the committee set up by the Government to deal with the wireless question. The chair man of that committee was Sir Robert Donald, and ho and his colleagues devoted a great deal of time to tho subject, particularly in its rotation to the newspapers. Extracts, were read from an informative article in. the London Daily Telegraph, among which was the following:— “In the very first second of the Now Year Great Britain greoted all her daughter States—simultaneously. It was o momentous occasion, both for the Fjnpiro nnd tho world, and it might have been made tho subject of. a little appropriate coremony. But that is not the British way. Even the form that epoch-making message took was in no sense extraordinary; it was just the usual ‘news bulletin’ of the British Government, which, in the past, has disseminated through a limited radius the official British point of view on things in

general. The difference between all previous days and January 1, 1926, is that vesterday the radius of that message was limited only by the confines of the earth itself, and—what is of far greater importance to the Empire—it brought the heart of the British Commonwealth into direct touch with its remotest members. This miraole—for so men who to-day are middleaged would have regarded it in their youth—was the work of the new Government wireless station near Itugbv—the moat powerful instrument of radio-telegraphy in the world. Working on a wave length of 18,000 metres, it sends out messages that ean bq heard in Australia and New Zealand, in South Afriea, and Hong Kong—and on every ship pf fils Majesty’s Navy. Its one draw-back is that nowhere in the more distant parts of the Enipiro is there an installation capable of reciprocating; London, through Rugby, can ‘talk’ to New Zealand, but New Zealand cannot yet ‘talk back.' Test messages despatched during the past month had to be acknowledged by cablegram " “May I just Kav*” he concluded “how heartily I endorse the committee’s congratulation to Sir Henry Brett on his knighthood It is a thoroughly welldeserved honour, for he has. during the course of a long life, done much to assist in building up for the New Zealand press the high position it has attained, and, in addition, has shown the qualities of a public spirited citizen. Although not a member of the union there is another recipient of Imperial honours to whom our body might fittingly extend its congratulations. I refer to Sir H. F. Wigram. He, too, has for a great many years been one of our leading proprietors, and a man of great public spirit, notably in the advancement of the air service of New Zealand, through the creation and equipment of the fine aerodrome at Christchurch, which bears his name. ELECTION OF OFFICERS. Sir George Fenwick was re-elected president for the ensuing year, and in thanking the meeting for its confidence, he intimated that he would retire from office at the end of the year. The following committee was also reelected : —Sir Henry Brett. Messrs H. Horton, L. Biundell. P. Solig, W. C. Weston. O. W. Earle, J. Coombe, A. M‘Nicol, R. J. Gilmour, and Dr Scholefield. Mr W. Easton was again appointed auditor, 'and Mr W. Dow secretary.