History makes way for compact future - Sydney Morning Herald

Final print ... the Sydney Morning Herald in broadsheet form on the production line in Chullora. Photo: Jim Rice

''The more things change, the more they are the same.''

In spite of this paradoxical proverb, when things change they are likely to be different. Likely to be, but not always sure to be. Throughout the Herald's 182 years to date, culminating in Monday's compact format, things have sometimes changed without adversely affecting the paper's identity or its readers' loyalty. Those have remained the same.

First, there were changes of ownership and masthead - from The Sydney Herald (a weekly and eventually daily newspaper founded in 1831 by Ward Stephens, William McGarvie and Frederick Stokes) to The Sydney Morning Herald (bought from The Sydney Herald's founders in 1841 by John Fairfax and Charles Kemp, and given its longer name the following year).

Down through the generations ... Sir Warwick Fairfax shows his son, Warwick Jr, the Fairfax newspaper printing press. Photo: Fairfax Archives

In 1853 John Fairfax bought Kemp's half-interest in the paper, took his sons Charles and James into partnership, and three years later changed the Herald's imprint to John Fairfax & Sons. The corporate name later dropped ''& Sons'', became John Fairfax Ltd, John Fairfax Holdings Ltd and, in 2007, Fairfax Media Ltd.

Without venturing too far into the business labyrinth in which the Fairfax family lost control of the company in 1990, mention should be made of 26-year-old Warwick Fairfax's disastrous 1987 privatisation of the proprietorship founded by his great-great-grandfather. That was certainly one change that did not leave things the same. As media headlines of the day put it: ''$1 Bn Private Bid For Fairfax''; ''Fairfax Empire Split Up''; ''Fairfax Totters Under Back Breaking Debt''; and, finally, ''Banks End The Fairfax Era''.

Almost everything that could go wrong for young Warwick did go wrong. His plan had assumed, firstly, that other branches of the controlling Fairfax family would not have to be bought out, but would remain as minority shareholders. Secondly, his takeover vehicle, Tryart Pty Ltd, would be able to repay its bank funding by selling some of the captured assets. Both assumptions were wrong. The world sharemarket crashed at the wrong time for Warwick. Persisting nevertheless, he gained control of the company at enormous cost in bank debt. Falling out with his original advisers, he had to enlist new ones.

Mr and Mrs Warwick Fairfax in 1949. Photo: Fairfax Archives

The privatised company, John Fairfax Group Pty Ltd, borrowed more hundreds of millions, and in 1988 refinanced with long-term bank debt and American junk bonds. Then the economy faltered, the interest burden became intolerable, the company restructured, tried in vain to do so a second time, and went into receivership.

So much for that, and the many complications that ensued. It is a relief to move instead to changes in technology and format at the Herald.

In 1853, the year in which the Fairfax family gained full proprietorship, the Herald became the first Australian newspaper to be printed by steam instead of hand-operated Columbian press. John Fairfax had bought this machinery during a return visit to his native Warwickshire, where he had published the Leamington Chronicle before migrating to Sydney.

A young Warwick Fairfax Jr. Photo: Fairfax Archives

Gradually the technology improved. Sydney, Melbourne and Adelaide were linked by telegraph in 1858, and in 1872 the first direct news cable from England reached the Herald in Sydney via Reuters. Electric light was installed in 1882 and during the next decade telephones began to ring. Mechanisation of typesetting started in 1895 with the introduction of Hattersley machines and these were soon followed by Monoline and Mergenthaler Linotypes. In 1908 the rat-a-tat of heavy upright typewriters was becoming a familiar sound in the reporters' room. Also in that year the Herald began using process blocks for the few illustrations relieving the grey uniformity of its broadsheet pages.

With the single exception of The West Australian in Perth, the Herald was the last metropolitan paper in Australia to devote its entire front page to classified advertising. That had always been the Herald's practice, and would remain so until late in World War II. The prime mover for overdue change on the front page - the news editor and future managing director, Angus McLachlan - wrote in his annual report for 1943: ''I strongly recommend that it would be better to make the change sooner rather than later - before the end of the war rather than after it. A great many changes have been necessitated by the restrictions of space during war-time, and even our more conservative readers have learned to accept changes in the Herald in these abnormal times. They would probably not attribute a change to front page news to any loss of restraint and discrimination by the Herald in the presentation of its news.''

The day of change was to be Saturday, April 15, 1944. By remarkable coincidence that was the day on which the Herald and Sydney's three other dailies (the Telegraph, Sun and Mirror) were planning to challenge what they regarded as clumsy and unnecessary military censorship. They were to do that by leaving telltale blank spaces where the censor had ordered controversial deletions from editorial copy. That would be a breach of censorship regulations and the fight would be on.

The Herald's general manager, Rupert Henderson, had agreed to this. At the last minute, however, McLachlan persuaded him that, as the obvious place for the proposed challenge would be the front page, which that day would be carrying news for the first time, readers seeing areas of blank space might well assume that the Herald had messed up the new format. So on that morning the only blank spaces on page 1 were those helping to create the distinctive layout and design, which were to survive with little change for decades to come. The lead story (''Gigantic Air Offensive Against Europe/Unceasing For 150 Hours'') carried a map of the target cities, and there were two photographs: one of 7th Division troops marching past the Cenotaph, across five columns; the other a single column block of US Admiral Halsey.

How much of McLachlan's accurate assessment of probable reader reaction to change might now be applied also to the Herald's new compact dimensions (30 centimetres wide, 40 centimetres deep) - which, as it happens, are not very different from those of the Sydney Herald's original format (26cm, 43cm)? Fairfax Media's announced intention to maintain high editorial standards would seem to rule out ''any loss of restraint and discrimination by the Herald in the presentation of its news''. It could also preserve the paper's identity and editorial tone, thus retaining readers' loyalty. Here's hoping.

Gavin Souter, a Herald journalist for 40 years (1947-1981), is the author of Company of Heralds (Melbourne University Press, 1981) and Heralds and Angels (MUP, 1991).