This week The Canberra Times changes size, for what is, in effect, the fourth time in its 90 years of publication. It is still very much the same Canberra Times, even if it now presents itself in a host of different forms. You can read us on paper. See us on a computer terminal, a laptop, an ipad, an android or a mobile telephone. We have a sizeable, and expanding presence in apps, and in social media. The physical newspaper remains a fundamental part of our output, but we have gone beyond being a newspaper producer which additionally has a presence on line. What we are, what we do and what we sell is news, information, analysis and opinion, and the form in which it comes to you is only secondary to that task. And, as ever, the lens through which we look out on the world is that of Canberra, and the primary eyes and ears for which we work are those of the people of Canberra.
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When the first edition of The Canberra Times appeared in 1926, it was, immediately, the primary source of news and information about what was happening in the world to the small but growing population. There were other newspapers, but they took time to breach the capital and, usually, acted as though the people in Canberra were some sort of alien species. Nowadays, one can buy a score of other physical newspapers in Canberra, (though the propensity of some rivals to mock and deride our readers continues); only, in London are more English language newspapers readily available. But increasingly, the challenge is not to outsell in newspaper production, but to be the first and most reliable source of information and intelligence that affects our readers, who do not care, so much, about how it comes.
The aspirations of our first owners, the Shakespeare family, were high. They had owned papers before, and had decided, from the very foundation and naming of the city in 1913, that they would set establish a newspaper here as soon as the population had reached a certain size. It was not to be just another newspaper in a large town with aspirations of becoming a city. It was to be the newspaper of the capital of the nation. The capital would house the nation's parliament, and politicians and people interested in influencing them would flock here.. It was to be the capital of executive government, the headquarters of great departments of state, and the home of many senior public servants. It would be a diplomatic and military centre. In due course it would have a national university, and become a great centre of study and research. The needs of its citizens would provide for good schools and cultural institution, and a high quality of services from the private professions, as well as steady work for tradesmen, builders and skilled artisans. And it was planned that this city would provide new standards of design and urban amenity, if not so much as so as to set the people of Canberra apart as to be a model of the standards of economic and sustainable living to which all Australians aspired.
The Shakespeares understood that those relying on The Canberra Times for their first and basic information about the world would be different and more demanding even than the readerships of the great newspapers in large cities. They would be affluent and, generally, well-educated and with access to alternative sources of information about what was occurring. Although, like Australians everywhere they were building homes, families and local vibrant communities and associations, they would not be consumed in parochial issues and quarrels, if only because the business of Canberra was the government of the whole nation. In any event, most of the readers came from other parts of Australia and retained a keen interest in, and continuing association with, their relatives there. The audience, in short, would be outward looking, cosmopolitan, as often as not having a professional, as well as personal, interest in the affairs of the people of Canberra, Australia and the world. When the Shakespeares declared they wanted a national outlook it was not with a view to publishing in all of the states, but of being a newspaper of an urbane and civilised national outlook, if one firmly rooted in the local community. Serving the development of this city would promote the nation it was established to serve.
The publication was a success from the first, but steady development was slowed by the great Depression and the Second World War It was not until the mid-1950s, under Menzies, that Canberra began to grow and become the sort of capital the founding fathers had hoped and expected. The earlier, slower growth, had inhibited the family's capacity to reinvest in a developing market, and predators began to contemplate entering the market. Without heirs anxious to take up the challenge, the family gave an option to Fairfax company, publisher of The Sydney Morning Herald. When the launch of The Australian was announced, The Canberra Times changed owners, but not aspirations about the sort of media organisation it wanted to be. Fairfax reinvested in the newspaper, and returned it to being a broadsheet. The break up, in the late 1980s, of the old Fairfax empire saw The Canberra Times variously owned by Kerry Packer, by Kerry Stokes and by John B Fairfax's Rural Press Ltd, before it returned to a reformed Fairfax organisation.
My service with The Canberra Times began when it was 45 years old, half its present age. In 1972, I could have discussed how we arranged and distributed the news, views and information we had to offer with Gutenberg, the 15th century packager of press and newsprint production. The technology was not remarkably different. I was with the newspaper as it adapted to the computer, new telecommunications technology and revolutions in the art of pre-press production and publishing, including the use of colour. These changes saw an increased recognition that we, as journalists and people in the business of bringing information and advertising to the attention of readers, are not primarily in the newspaper business, but in the information business. We still publish a newspaper, and, I hope and expect, long will. But many of our customers, including people who will continue to get the newspaper, are using our capacity to gather and interpret information to draw their news as it happens, from computer terminals, telephones and through the use of social media. It is not an either-or proposition. The means by which those who rely on us get their information is not nearly as important as the fact that people can get it in a useable form, as and how they want it. The platforms we provide are constantly expanding, as are efforts focused at providing easy passage of information in one form to another. Going compact is designed to serve that purpose, and to reduce some of the cost of, as it were, translation. It enhances the capacity of the organisation to put the first, and highest, focus on the range and quality of the news we provide.
