Rod Kirkpatrick: Print mirror of change

Dec 08, 2014 at 12:01 am by Staff


When the first Whyalla newspaper, the Whyalla News, was published in 1940, it was launched by a local printer but printed 76km away at Port Augusta, at the northernmost tip of Spencer Gulf.

It was first printed at Whyalla in July 1941, but from 1954 until 1959 it was printed at Port Pirie. Printing of the town’s paper reverted to Whyalla when a new Cossar press was bought, and from July 8, 1970, it was printed on a Goss web offset press with the printery used for a group of newspapers in the region. Since the end of May 2009, the Whyalla News has been printed at a bigger regional print centre, Murray Bridge.

Walter John Cumming Willson (1915-1971) launched the Whyalla News as a weekly in 1940 and used it as the foundation stone for a regional media group that his sons sold 51 years later to Rural Press. Born in Edinburgh, he was adopted by a family in Selkirk where he attended school and became an apprentice printer. He migrated to South Australia in 1936 and found that his natural mother was living in Renmark. He located her and began working as a printer at the local newspaper, the Taylor family’s Murray Pioneer.

In 1940 Willson, known locally as ‘Jock’, discovered a business opportunity in Whyalla and on January 26, in a wood-and-iron shed, began a one-man jobbing printing operation that traded as Edwards and Willson. Working alone, he also served as Whyalla correspondent for the Transcontinental, Port Augusta.

Within three months he had negotiated a deal that allowed him to launch the Whyalla News on April 5 and have it printed on the Port Augusta press. In July 1941 Willson was joined by his partner, J.E. (Jack) Edwards, and they moved into a new building and bought a press which allowed them to print the paper there from July 18.

Willson married Mollie Tamblyn Saies, of Renmark, in 1941. They had three sons – Richard John Cumming (b. 1942), Donald Boyd (b. 1943), and Craig Hamilton (b. 1946) – each of whom became involved in the newspaper business. Richard said his father was, “very committed to the business and he did work long hours”. Whyalla was a company town, its growth depending on what BHP did, and Willson, “always had good things to say about the activities of BHP”.

The Whyalla News acquired the Port Pirie Recorder in 1954 and the Northern Review, Jamestown, in 1955, and from 1954-59, all three were printed on a new press at Port Pirie. When the Willson-Edwards partnership was dissolved, with the Edwards brothers taking control of the Port Pirie and Jamestown papers in 1959, and the Willsons the Whyalla paper, the Willsons resumed printing in Whyalla.

Jock Willson was “very committed to the business” and family and employees described him as “hard but fair”. Richard Willson said his approach to newspapers was that “nothing was impossible, and if he thought there was a story there it would have to be obtained.”

He planned his family’s involvement in the business, sending each of his three sons to Scotch College, Adelaide, as boarders and working out what each would do and what their career paths or employment would be.

Jock selected journalism and editorial for Richard, production for Donald, and advertising and marketing for Craig. Richard was taken out of school a year early, at the end of 1957, after completing three years of secondary education, his father feeling unable to make the first of numerous return visits to Scotland without having a family member in the business.

Jock Willson made the Whyalla News a biweekly in November 1960, two years after BHP had announced it would build an integrated steelworks in Whyalla, and a triweekly in October 1968, three years after the steelworks opened. He sold the Eyre Peninsula Tribune in 1963, the family buying it back in 1971, the same year it bought back the Port Pirie Recorder (October) and Willson died (December).

Some months before, he appointed Fred Ogg appointed as general manager, Ogg having started there as a 14-year-old printer’s apprentice in 1941. Richard, Donald and Craig Willson became the heads of their departments at the Whyalla News, with Richard spending 15 months, managing the Recorder in Port Pirie.

Over the next decade, the Willsons’ company, Northern Newspapers, acquired the Transcontinental, Spencer Gulf Pictorial (a Whyalla free paper), Flinders News (a Port Pirie free paper) and the Automatic Printing Company, Port Pirie. Ogg retired in the early 1980s, allowing the Willson brothers to shift from their specialised roles into the group’s general management.

In November 1985 the Willsons listed their newly-named South Australian Regional Media on the Stock Exchange. Northern Newspapers had recently strengthened its management structure with a full-time accountant, group marketing, sales and development managers and a staff development consultant, with Richard becoming chairman.

SARM became the vehicle for the immediate purchase of the Victor Harbor Times, with Craig Willson moving to Langhorne Creek to manage the paper. Donald had moved to Clare, where he managed the Port Pirie paper and then the Barossa & Light Herald, Tanunda, which SARM bought in December 1987.

The Willsons had many faithful, long-term employees over the years until they sold their controlling interest in SARM on March 1, 1991, to Rural Press. Fred Ogg was one, Don Winton another. Winton, who had been the sub-editor at the Recorder, became the Whyalla editor in 1956 on the death of Jock Willson’s original partner, Jack Edwards.

Winton “contributed significantly to the paper for the next 23 years,” Richard said. “When the Whyalla News was at its height, it would take a regional focus and report events up to 160km away – for example, Coober Pedy, Kimba or the farming towns of Cowell or anywhere on the Eyre Peninsula,” he said. For many years, Whyalla was the most populous SA provincial city.

Richard Willson stepped down as SARM senior executive and chairman in October 1988, and opposed the sale of SARM in 1991, although his mother and two brothers were strongly in favour of it.

Rural Press printed its Whyalla, Port Pirie, Port Augusta, Port Lincoln, Ceduna, Cleve and Clare papers at Whyalla until May 2009, by which time the conglomerate had become part of Fairfax Media. Since then, they have since been printed at Murray Bridge, 75km east of Adelaide and 460km from Whyalla.

Sections: Columns & opinion

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