Reriiu! of Retietct, IIIOJOS. 



Rise and Progress of the N*S«W« Country Press^ 



By an Old 



The Seventh Annual Conference of the N.S.W. 

 Countn' Press Association will be held in Sydney 

 on October i6th, 17th and i8th, when Mother 

 State and Sister State newspaper proprietors, to the 

 number of 150 at least, are to meet in Sydney to 

 discuss questions of supreme importance to the 

 great Provincial Press, not only of N.S.W., but of 

 the Commonwealth as well. The gathering, there- 

 fore, promises to be unique in ptersonality and re- 

 markable in representation. The discussions of the 

 Conference will prove highlv interesting, and the 

 determinations are anticipated to have a far-reach- 

 ing effect on the influence and enterprise of pro- 

 vincial journalism. It is opportune to refer to a 

 movement initiated and directed by a few resolute 

 newspaper men. 



As the story of City Journalism in New South 

 Wales is almost coeval with that of the first settle- 

 ment of the territory-, so is the story of its ally — the 

 newspapers of the provinces. With the spreading 

 of the population further afield as the infant colony 

 grew towards vigorous and virile maturity, the local 

 newspaper became an important factor in develop- 

 ment. Up to i860, such centres were comparatively 

 few, and some, including the now great maritime 

 port of Newcastle, had no local newspaper. There 

 were then, to the best of the writer's recollection, 

 but seven provincial journals — those at Maitland, 

 Goulburn, Bathurst, Albury, Wagga, Yass and Braid- 

 wood. From that year the increase of country news- 

 papers became rapid. To-day the State possesses 

 220 newspapers published outside the metropolitan 

 area. 



In the early years of its history the Country Press 

 of N.S.W. was heavily handicapped. Remoteness 

 from the metropolis, slow, uncertain and costly 

 means of transit of heavy goods (for at that period 

 our railway system was in its infancy), absence of 

 the telegrnph and irregularity of inland mail ser- 

 vice conspired against the success of journalism in 

 the interior, from a commercial standpoint, and a 

 due appreciation by the local interests served. 



It was not unusual on the stated day of issue to 

 find the office unprepared to send forth the broad- 

 sheet. The stock of paper, the keg of ink, or other 

 essential articles ('-ong ago ordered from a firm of 

 printers' brokers in Sydney) were delayed somewhere, 

 by the boggy road, or some other contingency. The 

 writer remembers instances not only where bor- 

 rowing of paper or other indispensable material from 

 contemporaries in neighbouring towns was resorted 

 to, but where it was necessary to make up " formes " 

 to the special sizes of tea-papers, and blue-wove 

 and cream-laid foolscaps to provide issues pending 



Pressman. 



the arrival of a belated bullock-dray whose hetero- 

 geneous loading included a bale or so of " double- 

 crown," ■■ news, ' or " double-royal, " ordered months 

 ago, A disability of these conditions was the ar- 

 rival of the Sydney daily paj>ers, anticipating much 

 of the '■ copy " already set up, thereby reducing 

 otherwise fresh and interesting items to that stale 

 dish known in Scotland as '■ cauld kale het agen." 



Another handicap was that Government and 

 other metropolitan advertising orders only came 

 through the medium of advertising agents, subject 

 to extortionate commission of 25 j)er cent, on the 

 supposed contract price, often with the tacitly 

 understood condition that the countr)' newspaper 

 proprietor, who accepted their sen-ices, was to ob- 

 tain his supplies of paper, types and inks from his 

 particular agent's warehouse and his telegraphic 

 news, also, at a tariff the reverse of fair and reason- 

 able. The result was not uncommon that the quar- 

 terly statement of transactions between the parties 

 was accompanied by a cheque for a meagre dole, or 

 showed a debit balance, with a request for a prompt 

 remittance. 



The incubus grew, city advertising agents in- 

 creased in numbers — as they naturally would with 

 such inducements before them — and the audacity 

 of their overtures included additional sources of 

 profit, such as the supply of literary- copy, low-grade 

 newspaper supplements, etc., etc., instead of pay- 

 ments in honest cash for the advertising services 

 performed by the countrv- ne-wspaper proprietor 

 whom some of these adventurers had inveigled into 

 their clutches. The Country Press contributed to its 

 own undoing, in many instances, by committing it- 

 self to circulating free advertising supplements sup- 

 plied by certain agents of the cormorant variety, 

 who stipulated that for the supply of their produc- 

 tion as insets to the papers conducted by their 

 dupes they reserved to themselves the right of so 

 many columns of their sheet for advertisements, in 

 addition to which much of their so-called reading 

 matter was, upon the face of it, advertising puffs 

 which brought additional profit. 



All this time the Country Press was powerless. 

 Indeed, the tables were turned. The city advertise- 

 ments and telegrams puri'eyor became the principal, 

 and the country pressman, with whom he; did busi- 

 ness, the means wherebv he grew the richer while 

 his victim grew the poorer. 



Finallv it came to this : As regards the advertis- 

 ing contracts agents entered into with the big firms, 

 the terms were ne\er made known to the proprietors 

 of the papers in which the advertisements were in- 

 serted. "Tliese latter were simply ofiFereS a quota- 



