From the first edition on February 20, 1963 the Blue Mountains Gazette has been an integral part of our unique community.
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In more than 50 years the Gazette has grows from a small paper with a limited circulation into the 35,000+ plus copies distributed every week throughout the Mountains today.
Founding editor Mick Ticehurst, who retired from the paper in 2013, began his association with the Mountains in 1958 when he and his wife Anne moved to Faulconbridge from the city. When the Springwood Sentinel newspaper was closed down in 1962, they saw an opportunity to launch their own paper, the Lower Mountains Circle.
In partnership from the start, Anne sold the ads, delivered the papers and looked after the books. Mick wrote the stories, usually at night and on weekends while he continued to commute to Burwood for his full-time job as a linotype operator.
In 1963, the Blue Mountains Gazette was launched by a former mayor and alderman of the council, Jack Powell. It wasn't long before the Gazette suggested amalgamating with the Circle to better compete against two rival publications published by Cumberland Press.
As Ticehurst put it: "Being young and impressionable, we agreed. I was so inexperienced that I didn't bother to find out how much money the firm had owed but thought it couldn't be in too bad a position as it had not been going all that long."
He was wrong. The company had significant debts and it would be some years before Ticehurst and his business partner, compositor Terry Booker, were completely in the black.
In those early days he relied heavily on contributions from the public to fill the Gazette’s pages. "It was real parish pump - we even put in birthdays.”
In the mid-1960s, Ticehurst decided to have the Gazette printed at Hawkesbury Press at Windsor instead of in Springwood. It was cheaper, quicker and more efficient and it turned the paper's fortunes around.
Production changed immediately. Out went the two-day process of printing four pages at a time, turning them over and printing another four, putting them through a folding machine and manually inserting the sections inside each other. In came a one-day setup where printing, folding and collating were done in a single operation.
The managing director of Hawkesbury Press, Max Day, could see a future for the Gazette and arranged finance for Ticehurst and Booker to buy a substantial share in Mountain Press Pty Ltd, a new company establish to publish the Gazette.
"Along with the other 30-odd newspapers that had gone broke in the Blue Mountains before us, we came from having one foot in the grave to at least having a future," Ticehurst said.
Advertising grew, the size of the papers increased and he could employ more staff.
In 1982, Rural Press bought Hawkesbury Press, giving the Gazette a new partner.
Rural Press was a progressive company which used the Gazette as a “guinea pig'' for new printing techniques.
The paper was the first to install a pagination system which allowed pages to be assembled electronically at Springwood before being transmitted to North Richmond for printing.
The paper became part of the Fairfax stable when it merged with Rural Press in late 2006.
While its ownership may have changed over the years, the Gazette’s commitment to a range of community events has stayed the same - from sponsorship of the Blue Mountains Music Festival to Blue Mountains Business Awards, to the promotion of festivals up and down the Mountains.
Mick’s son, Steve, continues the family connection with the paper as the sales manager for the Blue Mountains and Penrith regions of Australian Community Media. “Steve was rolling papers with rubber bands from the time he was six years old,'' said his father.
Steve finished a printing apprenticeship with Mountain Press in the 1970s and returned to the paper as a sales representative in 1992 after a successful career in the New South Wales Police Force including time as a homicide detective on many high profile cases.
Steve Ticehurst oversaw the introduction of the monthly Blue Mountains Gazette Review magazine and other special publications.
“My dad was a tough act to follow but I’m committed to building on the Gazette’s many strengths and deep connections with the local community,” he said.
“We continue to offer the same proudly local focus each week in our print edition while constantly offering more value and up-to-date news and information on our popular website and Facebook page. With our new way of working, this focus on providing news as it happens will only go from strength to strength.”
While there are many factors that have made the Gazette unique, the strength of its letters pages have been the envy of many mastheads.
"In the beginning I wanted to publish every letter; my attitude was of giving everyone a fair go," said Mr Ticehurst.
Current editor Damien Madigan said the large number of letter to the editor in the Gazette is often the first thing other editors comment on – usually with envy.
“When you live in a community with as many passionate and vocal residents as the Blue Mountains it’s hard to imagine there are other papers that struggle to fill their letters pages. It’s certainly never a problem we’ve had!”
Along with the other 30-odd newspapers that had gone broke in the Blue Mountains before us, we came from having one foot in the grave to at least having a future.
- Mick Ticehurst