JUBILEE MEETING

Evening Post, Volume CIX, Issue 43, 20 February 1930, Page 17

JUBILEE MEETING

PEESS ASSOCIATION

CHAIRMAN'S REVIEW

(By Telegraph.—Press Association.)

TIMABU, This Day.

In his address at the jubilee meeting of the United Press Association to-day, the chairman, Mr. A. G. Henderson, said he occupied the chair for the second meeting in succession because of the death of Sir- George Fenwick, who was elected chairman .a year ago. so that he might be chairman in • the jubilee year. "Sir George Fen wick was the last of our links with the \ery early days of the association," said Mr. Henderson. "He and his colleagues were outstanding men, who would have made their mark in any community. They had vision, as well as_ great vitality, enormous energy and : wonderful industry. Trained in a day of rigid principles and conservative practice, they laboured in a field limited by narrow conventions. Their journalism developed slowly, but its foundations must have been very N sound. What I have in mm.d is the fact that the last two decades have been a period of great difficulty, of tremendously rapid expansion on the one hand and of violent economic disturbance on the other. In other countries there have been many newspaper disasters, but the Press of New Zealand has come through all these trials stronger than ever. Its solidjty is due, I firmly belipve, '_ in very large measure to this association, which, gathering its own strength from the co-operation of its members, endows them, in turn, with a strength they could not enjoy in any other way. The association is itself a monument to Sir George Fenwiek and the men who were associated with him in its foundation.". The ■ association was established m 1879 for the purpose of providing the subscribing newspapers with a comprehensive and prompt domestic news service and with as good a foreign news service as it could afford. From the inception, therefore, it had been r^ncerned almost exclusively with the telegraphic • transmission of news, and consequently its operations and its scope had been dependent on and limited by the policy and the organisation of the telegraph branch of the Post and Telegraph Department.

In 1879 all Press messages, association and special, numbered 87,593, pf approximately 3,000,000 words, valued at £6190. Last year the Press messages numbered 577,327, .aggregating 98,000,000 words, and bringing the Department a revenue of £74,141, the increases in the fifty years being 559 per cent, in messages, 3166 per cent, in wOrds, and 1097 per cent, in value. The average number of words per message in 1879-1880 would be 40j in 1929 it would be 170.

Mr. Henderson then outlined the growth of the telegraph service, and the advance made in' the printing and distribution of newspapers. "The cable business alone had grown in forty years from 155,000 words to nearly a million words. In the fifty-years the revenue of ithe -association had grown from £1486 to £19,715 a year, and the expenditure in like proportion. So far as cable news was concerned, the association had^ been working in conjunction with the principal Australian newspapers since 1887. Prior to that date the foreign service was bought direct from Eeuter's, though it was supplemented from time to time by ■arrangement with the "Sydney Morning Herald," the '^Argus," and the "Age." There was no change of consequence until 1910, when the Independent Cable Association was formed, with its main office at Vancouver. Thiseervice was purchased, and the special service of the Sydney "Sun" was acquired in 1913. Bouter's again entered the field in 1916, and its service was substi« tuted for the 1.0.A. In 1926 tho association entered into,a.joint arrangement with the Australian Press Association and the Sydney "Sun."

The speaker said that for fifty years the association had been the mainstay of the Press of New Zealand, and, in their own interests, its members, should permit no impairment of its efficiency and no curtailment of its 'service. He concluded by paying a tribute to the manager (Mr. Atack) and the staff. Mr. Atack had been manager for fortyfour years, a truly remarkable record.