'In 1858 George Tully placed an advertisement in the Sydney press, suggesting
there was a good opening for a newspaper in Newcastle and inviting interested people to contact him. Two compositors working on a Sydney paper Hugh McDicken and James Baker saw the advertisement and travelled by steamer to Newcastle to meet Tully and size up the opportunity.
'Tully told the pair that Newcastle was destined to become an important shipping and commercial centre. McDicken and Baker bought an old press and type for 100 pounds and Tully stumped up a matching sum to keep things moving.
The first issue of The Newcastle Chronicle and Hunter District News appeared on August 28, 1858. It was a flimsy, four-page sheet with a sixpenny cover price. But unlike the earlier Telegraph, The Chronicle survived.
'By March 3, 1861, the paper was appearing as a six-page publication and it shifted from weekly to twice a week. The following year the paper was appearing every Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday.
Editorially, The Chronicle campaigned for a hospital, for coalmine ventilation, for a school of arts and for better roads.
'... the fledgling newspaper didn't have things all its own way. The founder of the short-lived Telegraph, George Maxted, tried yet again, founding The Newcastle Free Press in 1861. It was another failure.
The Newcastle Standard appeared in 1864 and this paper had a fiery relationship with The Chronicle. The feud between the two papers culminated in The Standard's editor whipping his opposite number from The Chronicle in Bolton St, an assault for which he was fined five pounds. '
Source: Greg Ray, '150 Years in Print' , Newcastle Herald, 13 November 2008. Reproduced at: http://www.tannery.com.au/tannery-articles/2008/11/13/150-years-in-print/
Sighted: 18/04/2013
