WORLD’S BEST PAPER

Star (Christchurch), Volume LXVI, Issue 20232, 16 February 1934, Page 4

WORLD’S BEST PAPER

Australian Journals in the List. DEAN WILLIAMS'S PRAISE. (Special to the “ Star.”) BRISBANE, February 3. Many Australian newspapers are included in the list of the 200 best papers in the world compiled by Dean Walter Williams, an outstanding figure in newspaper life, who will arrive in New Zealand on February 27. Dean Williams, who is president of the Missouri University and Dean of the Missouri University School of Journalism, passed through Brisbane on the way to southern States and New Zealand. He added that the Brisbane papers he had seen came in the A 1 class. Dean Williams, in an interview given in his suite aboard the Dutch Royal Mail liner Nieuw Holland, declared that it was an extreme pleasure for him to come to Australia after an absence of 25 years. He had many estimable friends in this country and he looked forward to meeting them and also making new friendships. “My wife and I are greatly interested in journalism and education, and in both these spheres the newspapers of Australia are doing great service. I take pride in the Australian papers and this country’s activities,” he said. “ I desire to be designated a working journalist, as I am making my round,” he said to the interviewer. “My University officials said to me; Now you go round the world and have a holiday. They said this because my job is to travel and study. It is the job of a newspaper man to travel and study and thus gain information that will be helpful not only to himself but to the readers of the journals he represents. I am a working journalist of the old type.” Round the World. Since Dean Williams left America in September he has seen much of the world and interviewed many of the leading figures in all walks of life ranging from the King of Italy to the “ man in the street ” in many cities. His “ rounds ” on the present voyage have embraced Italy, Germany, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Jugo-Slavia, Greece, Turkey, Palestine, Egypt, India, Federated Malay States, Singapore, Java and now Australia, thence on to New Zealand and from that Dominion across to his homeland. The Dean had the good fortune ’to interview Herr Hitler (on three occasions), the Pope in Rome, the King of Italy, the Greek Patriarch and other church dignitaries. “ Will you say something about the Missouri University?” asked the inter- “ Yes, I will say but a few words in this connection, as it would take far too long to go into details. It was the first university in the world to confer the Degree of Journalism. This was inaugurated about 20 years ago. Since that time journalists from the university have gone forth to all corners of the earth, many of them making great names for themselves anti also for the University of Missouri. There was a time when graduates from Missouri were attached to newspapers in Adelaide and Melbourne, but I understand there arc no Missouri men at present on the staffs of the Australian Press.”