www.smh.com.au

History of The Sydney Morning Herald

John Fairfax, who bought control of the Sydney Herald in 1841, beginning his family's 149-year long control of the paper he later renamed The Sydney Morning Herald.

THE BIRTH OF THE HERALD
April 18, 1831

front page first edition

The Sydney Morning Herald began life as the weekly Sydney Herald. It cost 7d, had just four pages and only 750 copies were printed. The paper, named after Scotland's Glasgow Herald, was founded by Englishmen Alfred Ward Stephens, Frederick Stokes and William McGarvie, who all worked for the Sydney Gazette.

The trio's new paper was initially based in Redman's Court, near George Street. Ten years later, John Fairfax (pictured left) began his family's 149-year long control of the paper. The bankrupt Englishman had published the Leamington Spa Sketch Book before migrating to New South Wales in 1838.

The paper became a daily in 1840, two years before it was renamed to its present masthead. The front page carried nothing but notices and advertisements, with news buried at the end of page two. Its editorial policies were based "upon principles of candour, honesty and honour... We have no wish to mislead; no interest to gratify by unsparing abuse or indiscriminate approbation."

GOLD RUSH
May 28, 1851

gold miner

A gold discovery near Bathurst made the Herald nervous. It wrote: "should our gold prove to be abundant ... let the inhabitants of New South Wales and the neighbouring colonies stand prepared for calamities far more terrible than earthquakes or pestilence." The calamities may not have eventuated as predicted, but soon after the paper brought a rotating cylindrical press to replace the slower flat bed press. It had also switched to wider columns and a smaller font to give room for more advertisements. Illustrations had appeared a decade ago. The paper remained dependant on ships for news, with no telegraph connection between Sydney, Melbourne and Adelaide until 1858 or international link until the 1870s.



FEDERATION
January 2, 1901

By the time of federation, the Herald had become a Sydney institution and had broadened its news sources, using its first foreign correspondents during the Boer War in southern Africa, just two years earlier. Its price had tumbled, with 16 pages now costing a single penny. For half a century, people had used the paper's nickname, coined by a satirical journal which called it a "lachrymose old Granny".

GALLIPOLI
May 3, 1915

gallipoli

The ANZAC attack on the Gallipoli peninsula was doomed from the outset. The spot was poorly chosen and communications were inadequate. Forty-six thousand allied soldiers and 87,000 Turks would lose their lives in a campaign lasting eight months.

But the day after the landing, the paper reported it as a small victory of sorts, rather than the disaster it became.

This front page came eight years after the Herald first used photographs and at about the time typewriters appeared at the paper.



BODYLINE BOWLING
January 20, 1933

Bodyline bowling - fast, short-pitched and directed at the batsman's body - was employed by English cricketers trying to stop the indomitable Don Bradman (pictured left) and win back the Ashes from Australia in the summer of 1932-33.

The editorial page suggested a radical alteration of the rules was the only solution to England's tactics, which the Australian Cricket Board labelled unsportsmanlike.

By then, the paper had moved to new Hunter Street premises in 1929, purpose-built just before the Wall Street crash.

The Herald launched its new women's supplement in the same year, and celebrated its 30,000th edition a year later.

FRONT PAGE NEWS
April 15, 1944

front page 1944

News finally made the Herald's front page. Of Australia's metropolitan newspapers, only the West Australian was later to make the change. The Times in London resisted the trend until 1966.

The change came only after substantial debate. Some felt it would tarnish a newspaper's image to publish news ahead of public and advertising notices created by the community.

The Herald, on the other hand, said there was "an urgent public demand in these critical days for ... more news." A shortage of newsprint and "a deep sense of responsibility" also led the proprietors to reduce advertisements to make room for news.

KOREAN WAR OVER
July 26, 1953

front page korean war

The front page of the four-year-old Sunday Herald declared the Korean War was nearing an end.

It was an expansive time for Fairfax. In 1951, it launched The Australian Financial Review as a weekly paper.

In 1953 it bought the 40-year-old Sun, only to merge its Sunday edition with the Sunday Herald the same year to form the Sun-Herald. In the same year, the Herald moved from Hunter Street to Broadway (pictured left).

In 1956, John Fairfax Limited became a public company to raise capital to fund its expansion.

MAN ON THE MOON
July 22, 1969

front page moon landing

The front page carried the famous picture of the Neil Armstrong and Edwin Aldrin landing, and announced the start of their return journey to Earth. In a busy decade for newspapers, John F Kennedy was assassinated (1963), decimal currency was introduced (1966), Harold Holt drowned (1967) and Australian troops went to (1965) and returned from (1972) Vietnam.

The Herald went through its own changes. In 1966 it ran its first colour advertisement, while in 1969 the paper was divided into two sections: news and business/sport. It reached 100 pages for the first time the same year, while in 1971, the first features page appeared.



THE DISMISSAL
November 12, 1975

front page whitlam sacked

The day after Prime Minister Gough Whitlam was dismissed by the Governor-General, Sir John Kerr, the Herald took the unusual step of publishing its views in a front page editorial.

The editorial line continued inside. It declared: "In the past three years, we have suffered, in the name of reform, a far ranging assault on our traditional way of life and its virtues of individualism and independence."

The Herald's support for the return of the conservative parties was typical of the media -- it did not support the Australian Labor Party at a federal election until 1984.

By the time Whitlam was sacked, the Herald had ordered its first computer system and had reached 144 pages.

FAIRFAX FAMILY BOWS OUT
December 11, 1990

front page warwick fairfax

The Herald reported the end of the Fairfax family's control of the paper with: "It has taken Warwick Geoffrey Oswald Fairfax three years and three days to blow a family inheritance worth $500 million."

The day before, banks called in receivers and the company's debts totalled $1.7 billion.

Warwick, great-great-grandson of John Fairfax, tried to re-privatise the listed group by borrowing $1.8 billion shortly before the sharemarket crash in 1987.

In the three years before those debts sent Fairfax broke, the group sold its interests in Channel Seven, AAP and Fairfax magazines (including Woman's Day, Cosmopolitan, and People).

The next year, Canadian media baron Conrad Black bought the Fairfax group, before it was re-listed on the stock exchange in 1992.

NATIVE TITLE
December 22, 1993

front page mabo

Sometimes, the long eyes of history disagree with the short-sighted news emphasis of a daily newspaper. Eighteen months before this front page, the High Court's decision in Mabo v Queensland was handed down but made only page three of the next day's Herald.

Paul Keating's Native Title Act only just made it above the fold of this front page, giving way to the resignation of a state MP, Phillip Smiles. The Herald was in its last few years of being produced at Broadway. In 1996, the editorial department moved to the upper levels of a building at Darling Park in the city, connected by microwave link to the printers at Chullora, nearer the city's key distribution channels.



SEPTEMBER 11
September 12, 2001

In the lead-up to the Sydney Olympic Games, the Herald underwent its first major design overhaul in more than 20 years. Typefaces changed and Column 8 moved to the back page alongside a news summary and a new gossip column, Spike. Metropolitan, the arts and entertainment section, also expanded.

More developments came after the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001. After the first plane hit at 10:48pm, editors reverted to the production system they had devised for the Olympics and created close to 20 pages of news over six editions during the course of the next day.

The Herald's website, smh.com.au, received 241,175 unique visitors on September 12, at the time its biggest day since launching in 1995, but now less than the daily average.

Newspaper sales figures climbed as high as they had in almost 30 years.

Compiled by Tim Dick, Joel Gibson and Amy Lawson