tagPicture1

AS far as reunions go, it was commemorative rather than melancholy.

Ironic, since it was the 20th anniversary of the death of a Sydney tabloid of which I have so many fond memories. The Sydney Sun newspaper -the screaming Fairfax rival to Murdoch's Daily Mirror, also now defunct -

died in 1987, killed off by television.

I was there as chief of staff for two years until 1981 (salary, $23,600). But what exciting years they were to a young journo.

Alan Ramsey, a former Sun man and now political guru with The Sydney Morning Herald -where I spent much of my career - said this in

2002: ''Most people don't realise how the death of afternoon newspapers in this country - everywhere, for that matter -reflects the remorseless change in mass communications, most particularly in our reading habits and in how we get our information. Nothing has been the same since.''

I looked around the reunion at the Bowlers' Club on March 14 and saw Derryn Hinch, Kerry

O'Brien, my current boss Peter Christopher, a former sports writer/editor, and thriller author

Michael Robotham (I published his first

book, ''Neighbours in Dispute'').

''You know what strikes me about tonight, apart from how much older we're all grown?'' I said to Mike.

[Puzzlement]. ''The room is full of blokes. [Men outnumbered women 10:1]. In most newsrooms today it's the other way round.''

In my Castle Hill office, I'm the only man among eight editorial staff. Blokes earn better money elsewhere. I tell my staff war stories of the Sun years and they can't believe it.

How we turned over three yo eight editions

of a paper in a day, with typewriters!

The record went to Ian ''Storky'' Arnold who couldn't make our reunion. He was editor on November 11, 1975, when Neil (Seamus) O'Reilly rang in a lather from Canberra at 1.50pm to report the Whitlam Labor

government's sacking.

Consulting his notes, Seamus wrote the story off the top of his head (as we did) to a copytaker who typed it up, two sentences to a page. The sheets went to Arnold and chief

sub-editor, Kerry Myers (now The

Catholic Weekly editor) who re-made a special edition.

The subbed copy was dropped down a chute, slip by slip and chuffed through vacuum tubes to the press room and set in hot lead on

printing plates.

Storky Arnold turned over that edition in 26 minutes. Ah, yes, different times.