Herald enters its 75th year

IF you look at the South Coast Herald masthead this week you will notice that your ‘leader with the local news’ has notched up an important milestone.

This week’s edition is numbered ‘volume 75 no 1’. This means it is the first edition in the South Coast Herald’s 75th volume and therefore the start of its 75th year of existence.

Actually, the newspaper’s history goes back even further than that. It was originally known as the South Coast Reveille and was started by a group of local businessmen in 1934. However, WWII intervened and it closed its doors from 1939 to 1945. After the end of the war the newspaper was revived and renamed South Coast Herald, a name under which it flourished and grew into the modern, well-respected publication it is today.

In the 1960s, is was bought by the Hutchinson family and it became part of the Caxton stable in 1983. For many years, the South Coast Herald offices were in Reynolds Street, Port Shepstone. It moved to its present home, in Station Road, in 1985.

The current editor of the South Coast Herald, Colleen Haggard, who joined the editorial team 28 years ago, took over from Linda Hooper in 1999. She is the latest in a long line of passionate, talented, fearless and often, eccentric (we’re not necessarily saying she is) editors who have served the newspaper so well.

“When I started at the Herald, we reporters were still using manual typewriters. Our production department was a very different place compared to what it is today. It was filled with some scary looking machinery including what looked like a huge operating theatre table in the middle of the room. There were also ‘strippers’ in the production department – male and female ones – who always ‘stripped’ on a Thursday under production manager Wally Archer’s watchful eyes.

“Then there was another great big table thing in a room with orange walls. This is where the litho operator lived and made plates. In this digital age, I don’t think our modern reporters would know what a litho operator was, let alone a plate,” she said.

Colleen paid tribute to Wally, who served 40 years with the Herald and who retired four years ago.

“Technology may have changed but the one thing that has never changed is the teamwork and commitment from everyone involved in bringing out the paper every week. When I took over as editor, it was Wally who helped me every step of the way. It was with such great care that he put together more than 2 000 editions of the Herald during his term of office,” she said.

Wally has no regrets when he looks back on his 40-year career with the South Coast Herald.

“It was a fascinating career. We were constantly learning and weathering change. It was history in the making. My career must have spanned five generations of technology. Working for a community paper, I was also such a part of the history of this community.

“The best part of working for the South Coast Herald, though, was the people with whom I worked. They were great people. Of course, putting together a newspaper could be stressful and there was sometimes tension – but tension is part of life,” he said.

Everyone who worked for the Herald would agree the staff had always been one big family, he concluded.

Over the years, staff turnover has been amazingly small for such a big organisation, thanks in part to the camaraderie that has always existed between Herald team members. Wally isn’t the only person who has a long service record. People who work for the Herald are generally pretty happy and tend to stay a long time. Many Herald staffers have clocked up more than 20 years.

The longest-serving Herald staff member is advertising doyenne and assistant manager Sue Pillay, who has been with the Herald for 31 years. She agreed with Wally that working for the Herald was a family affair.

“We all care about each other, about our families, about our children and, now, about our grandchildren,” she said. Sue appreciated the fact staff members weren’t just numbers and that everyone felt important.

“Even after 31 years, I still thank God every day that I am paid to do what I love,” she said.

The final word goes to our editor. Colleen pointed out that while the South Coast Herald had evolved over the years and weathered many changes it was still doing what a community paper was supposed to do. It was still serving its community faithfully, she said.