Page 52 - Melbourne Observer - Wednesday, March 21, 2018
www.MelbourneObserver.com.au
Local Media’s 50 Years. Part 2.
Inquiry into print pioneer’s dealings
50 YEARS
Local Media Pty Ltd, publisher of the Melbourne Observer and The Local Paper, traces its origins to September 1969. Our 50-year anniversary will be held in September 2019. Over the 18 months from March 2018, we present a series of feature articles looking at our history over the past half-century. ■ In August 1969, in the month prior to the opening of the Observer newspaper by Gordon Barton, another printer introduced a new weekend publication to Melbourne. Dern Langlands commenced publication of Postscript Weekender, through his Regal Press company, based in Newton St, Richmond. Dern Geoffrey Stewart Langlands was born on Valentine's Day, 1923, the son of an itinerant alcoholic printer, who towed his family around Victorian country towns as he worked on weekly local newspapers. As the family fortunes varied, Dern and his brother, has their own apprenticeships in towns as various as Kyabram and Corryong. He later re-called working a day at Mount Gambier on the South Australian border, ‘diss-ing’ the hand-set type on printed jobs back into type cases. All for the price of a pie. When World War II came, liked many others, Dern Langlands lied about his age, gaining entry into the Air Force. He first worked with ground crew, then was assigned to fly Spitfires with the RAF. He recalled guarding the niece of British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, involved in secret behindthe-lines intelligence operations in Europe. Back from the war, Dern set up Regal Press in Richmond as a small job printing outfit. He joked it was ‘Lager’ spelt backwards. Young Dern supplemented his earnings as a Friday-night pug at Jimmy Sharman's boxing tents. Dern saw his career ‘break’ as winning the job to print the peanut bags sold at the Saturday afternoon VFL football matches around Melbourne. He used his hand-platin machines, with three people: one to set the bags, one to pedal the press, the other stacking the product. It was a bonus when he won the competitor's peanut bag contract as well. A common story is for media people especially to look the part. Dern Langlands followed the advice: selling his motor-cycle, replaced with a huge Dodge sedan, even later with a Mercedes Benz 600 and a Rolls Royce. A look at the Victorian RegistrarGeneral's newspaper files shows Dern Langlands to have developed a large portfolio of newspaper titles
● Dern Langlands: published Postscript Weekender as his print business grew: Foodland newspapers, later working as a press Home News, The Richmond Leader, hand run by Tom Gardiner, ProducPostscript Weekender and All Sport tion Manager Don McAlpine, and engineer Ian Metcalfe. Weekly. Langlands may have had every One paper, Melbourne Trading Time, was set up as a competitor to chance of making the business Margaret Falkiner's Melbourne work. At a later State Government inTrading Post. Dern installed modern Goss Com- quiry ordered by the Legislative Asmunity web offset presses at his sembly, led by Alex Chernov of Owen Richmond factory, built the Belved- Dixon Chambers (later State Govere Motel, started engineering works ernor), into Langlands's business afcalled D.R. Enginnering and Foldin fairs, Dern Langlands was accused of Industries, and created a chain of living a ‘high life’ of ‘wine, women ‘Toyrific’ stores. And he bet it all on a project to and song’. His reply was “I don't sing supply a free daily newspaper - Post- very well.” Scroundrel Melbourne journalist script - to Melbourne, also under the John ‘Somersault’ Somerville-Smith title of the Melbourne Daily Mail. It involved newspaper men such sometimes manned the reception as Chris Fisher and Evan Hannah desk of Dern's Beldevere Lodge, with guests checking in for a clanSenior. The project was part of his finan- destine motel room booking, often wondering how their secret trysts cial undoing. Six weeks of free papers distrib- appeared in the Smith's Weekly coluted all over Melbourne by a team umn of Jack Pacholli's Toorak of 40 mini-skirted girls in a fleet of Times. Regal Press had contracts for imorange sedans led to a loss of more portant and lucrative supermarket than $800,000. In July 1969, Dern applied to the handbill work, using a quarter-plate ANZ Bank for an increase in his technique, that personalised each company's overdraft ‘to meet over- Foodland grocery store's publicity. Maxwell Newton's association due creditors, provide (working) capital and to enable completion of with Dern was the Langlands’s undoing. the motel building’. Max bought Regal Press from Financial advisor Les Smart was a vital link to this much-needed fi- Dern, defaulting on the $1.5 million payments, leaving Langlands pennance. He was a partner in the accoun- niless and bankrupt. “Dern must hate me,” Newton tancy firm, Marquand & Co., the administrator of the Co-Operative later confided. Newton had promised Farmers and Graziers Direct Meat to pay the price over 10 years from March 1974, over 10 years. Supply Ltd. Newton had also been advanced Smart arranged some $1,291,762 in the Co-Op's funds to be trans- $724,000 by Smart. “None of this money (totalling ferred to Langlands' interests in $2,015,762) was repaid to the Soci1972-75. It was in this time that as a school- ety,” Mr Chernov found. Chernov examined the role of boy, Local Media publisher Ash Long would play truant from after- Leslie Smart, who had been apnoon classes, to work at the Rich- pointed in1968 as the administrator mond factory for $1.50-$2 an hour. of the Society “with full powers to His first job was to hand collate manage its affairs as he saw fit”. In late 1974, Smart became Expre-printed sections of the Postscript Weekender and All Sport Weekly ecutive Chairman. Smart had expe-
rience in assisting other companies “including the ANZ Bank, and government and semi-government organisations. He was also involved in publishing a monthly journal for a church and in advising it on financial and business matters”. Chernov told Parliament that Smart’s reputation was very high as a financial adviser, “particularly as he re-organised the society to the extent that it commenced to earn profits”. “His commercial judgements and decisions were rarely, if ever, challenged,” the report concluded. Smart became a financial advisor to Langlands in 1970. ANZ Bank agreed to the overdraft on the condition that Smart oversee an examination of the accounts. Later, to reduce the overdraft, loans were taken with Custodian Nominees and Alliance Acceptance, on the basis of two mortgages over the Belvedere Motel. However, Chernov reported: “It is doubtful whether (the businesses) would have survived for long with the infusion of funds which Mr Smart procured for them from the Society.” Chernov said that Smart felt obliged to help fund the businesses of both Dern Langlands and Maxwell Newton to support a marketing strategy he was developing for the co-operative. The idea was to distribute handbills weekly with loss leader meat specials from supermarkets and butcher shops … and the meat being supplied by the Co-Op. At this time, Dern Langlands was considering the re-launch of his daily Postscript newspaper. In 1969, he had launched the free daily, with revenue from advertisements budgeted to pay all expenses. Postscript was not a commercial success. Dern Langlands said he had expected to make $800,000 on the daily newspaper, but instead lost $800,000 in a number of weeks. Smart was quoted to say the losses were more in the order of $400,000. Langlands licked his wounds, but not before making news of his own, reported by Alan Armsden, of his marriage to a 20-year-old ‘waif’: “A fairytale will come true in Melbourne today when a beautiful waif marries a multi-millionaire old enough to be her father. “One week ago, voluptuous 20year-old Sharryn Young was out of work and didn't know where she was came from or where she was going. “Today after a fantastic whirlwind courtship, she will become the wife of 54-yearold motel owner Dern Langlands.” The story reported that Sharryn was driving Dern's $108,000 Mercedes Benz, and that he would be giving her a Mercedes-Benz sports car as a wedding present. Groomsman was close mate Len Thompson of the Collingwood Football Club. Dern retired bankrupt to Queensland, but returned to Melbourne in the early 1980s to manage Royale Press, in old Foy & Gibson buildings in Cambridge St, Collingwood. With a modest four-unit press manned by Barry Harper, he began to accumulate weekly jobs including John Gannan's Independent Mounteasterly, the Lambert family's
Mountain Views from Healesville, Pacholli's Toorak Times, and the 26week experiment of Sunday Mirror headed by businessman Dennis Tiernan and crazy editor Richard L'Estrange in 1983. Lady Mary Montagu was to be prominent with a Melbourne social column called ‘Madam Lash’. Ash Long was in his end days at Leader, and assisted in the first week distribution of 70,000 32-page papers across Melbourne, with the assistance of Leader moonlighters John Gray, Arthur Preusker and Keith Peplar. Tiernan believed Long to be an undercover man for Rupert Murdoch! Tiernan had arranged lucrative massage parlour advertisements, and L'Estrange was relying on a poor emulation of the ‘tits, trots, TV and track’ formula that John Sorell had invented for Maxwell Newton’s Melbourne Observer in the previous decade. The Sunday Mirror failed. Long continued to use Royale Press for my job printing, even earning a handy weekly commisison from introducing Terry Tayler's Coastal Telegraph newspaper as a regular print job. Royale Press went into liquidation, despite clients operating in a ‘cash-with-copy’ basis. The printing press was under the control of financier Joe Kadane, who put it briefly into the hands of Ron Levin from Conform Press. After Conform went broke, Kadane offered the $90,000 press to Long - with easy weekly instalments, and 25 per cent interest. Long said “no thanks”. The press was purchased by Theo Skalkos for his S & G Rotary Printery and Foreign Language Publications in West Melbourne. It was used for his daily Greek Herald and weekly New Country titles, as well as the Serbo-Croatian Novosti, Spanish Herald and Australian Soccer publications. Dern set himself up with a giant sheet fed printing machine in Abbotsford, and the short-lived Weblith Press looked after the printing of newspaper and book publishers. Len Thompson also helped out by publishing large-print books of Miles Franklin's My Brilliant Career. For some years, around the mid1980s, Dern Langlands operated a small commercial printery from a shop in Smith St, Collingwood, and later in Rosanna. There was some more shady trading as he opened a hydroponics outlet, providing equipment fort ‘growers’. Long says that by no means was a mentor, nor could he admire many of Langlands’s personal attributes. Yet, for his friends, Langlands had a magical attraction. Long was asked to deliver his eulogy after Dern’s death on January 14, 1996. The focus of the tribute was not so much on the commercial failures, but Langlands’s days as Commodore of the Port Melbourne Yacht Club, his War service, the opportunities he gave to young media people, and the entrepreneurial spirit that surrounded his businesses. These were ingredients, good and bad, to the Local Media story.