The Daily News MONDAY, DECEMBER 23, 1929. THE PRESS ASSOCIATION.

Taranaki Daily News, 23 December 1929, Page 10

The Daily News MONDAY, DECEMBER 23, 1929. THE PRESS ASSOCIATION.

The attainment of its golden jubilee by the United Press Association of New Zealand is an event rightly to be regarded as possessing exceptional public interest, for there is no other single agency in this country that provides a daily service meeting the needs of an equal number of people. Day after day for fifty years the Press Association has been supplying New Zealand with its own news and the news of the whole world, and its work has not been done on the eight-hour day principle. From 8 o’clock on six mornings of the week until well into the afternoon, it is distributing its messages to the evening newspapers, and when' they are satisfied it switches over to the service t‘or morning newspapers, continuing until long after the majority of people have gone to bed- No doubt we all take this kind of thing as a matter of course; at breakfast or earlier the day’s news absorbs our attention, and we scarcely have time do give a thought to its origin. Just for once, however, it will be worth while to try to visualise th e life of a remarkable institution. Before New Zealand had cable communication with the outer world news from abroad arrived by mail at irregular intervals. The newspaper of the sixties in this country took a bundle of English journals when it arrived and culled from them accounts of important events which had happened weeks earlier. About 1869 Sir Julius Vogel instituted a Government service, telegraphing a news summary throughout the colony as each English and . Australian mail arrived. The next move was the establishment of a similar service as a private venture by two enterprising journalists, Messrs. Holt and McCarthy,. .who .also undertook the. collection and distribution of New Zealand news. In the early seventies, however, a number of newspapers made a working agreement to supply each other with news, and they carried on successfully in competition with the private service until the formation of the Press Association. It was, of course, the opening of cable communication with Sydney in 1876 that paved the way for the -combination which has carried on for. fifty years. Reuter’s. Agency at once took the opportunity afforded by the cable to extend its very admirable news service to New Zealand, and in the very early days of the Press Association Reuter’s supplied all its foreign news. It was not, however*, the foreign ■ news that was the first consideration of those who founded the organisation. They desired for reasons of economy to eliminate competition between rival news services in, New Zealand. Telegraph charges were high, competition was adding unnecessarily to cost, and so long as it continued the resources of the .newspapers were inadequate to supply as comprehensive a service as their proprietors deemed worthy of the country and the times. The whole population of New Zealand was barely 450,000, three-fifths of whom were in the South Island, and facilities for the distribution of newspapers were almost non-existent. But the newspaper men of the day had vision and courage. On December 19, 1879, a number of them decided to band together as gatherers and distributors of news and formed the Press Association. It was not long before they decided to supplement Reuter’s service of news from abroad, and arrangements were made to acquire the special cable messages of the Sydney Morning Herald, which at that time filled the needs of the principal Australian newspapers. With the development of Australian journalism new. jcable .services have been instituted, and the

policy of the Press Association has been to acquire rights in all of them. The result is that the New Zealand newspapers subscribing to the Press Association publish a more comprehensive world news service than any other newspapers outside England, and even such famous journals as the London Times and Daily Telegraph do not cover a wider field. The development of the foreign service has been wonderful. The records of the Press Association show that great enthusiasm g'reeted the an-' nouncement less than forty years ago that 100,000 words of foreign news had been distributed in New Zealand in twelve months, but nowadays the foreign messages run into more than ten times as many words in a year. The organisation has been less successful in its distribution of New Zealand news, though its system is the best than can be devised, every newspaper that subscribes to the association being responsible for the dissemination of the news of its own district. It would be quite beyond the power of individual newspapers to organise similar services for themselves. It says much for the forethought of its founders that the Press Association has developed a fine public service by pursuing steadfastly the policy they laid down so many years ago. New Zealand may well remember them with gratitude and admiration.