By NARELLE COULTER
LEGENDARY Journal editor Greg Dickson was a fresh-faced “boy from the Mallee” in 1939 when he purchased the newspaper that would become his passion and his legacy.
At his funeral 54 years later, former Dandenong mayor Morrie Jarvis described Greg as “one of Dandenong’s best-loved citizens ever”.
“He earned the respect of the community because he was always so unassuming, so quietly efficient and he was always ready to give freely of himself in the service to our community,“ Mr Jarvis said at the time.
He then joked that he would rush to grab the “first” Journal each Wednesday morning “so I could read exactly what I had said in the council chamber at the previous meeting”.
Greg’s “reporting was extremely accurate and everything he wrote was in true context.”
Greg Dickson was an old -style editor/proprietor: he wrote stories, subbed copy, laid out the newspaper, got ink under his nails manning the printing presses and helped distribute the finished product.
He inherited his love of newspapers from his mother, Flora.
Flora and Alfred Dickson bought the Ouyen and North West Express, a small paper in the heart of the Mallee in 1918. When Alfred fell ill and died several years later, Flora took over the running of the Express.
At 13 Greg was already honing his craft writing all the sports reports for the Express. At 14 he was acting assistant secretary of the Ouyen Racing Club.
Greg eventually left school to help his mother full-time at the Express.
When Flora sold the Express in late 1938, Greg decided to buy his own newspaper. Luckily for him, William Bennett was ready to sell the Journal.
“Every reporter hopes for the day when he might have his own paper and run it the way he thinks it should be run,” wrote Greg in his farewell when he retired as editor in 1964.
“I was lucky – I set out to buy a paper in Yarrawonga and wound up buying one in Dandenong!”
Greg and his wife Daphne were married in Ouyen in 1939, shortly before they moved to Dandenong. Daphne, a nurse who was fondly known as Zig, and Greg became a formidable team at the Journal.
Zig became one of the “backroom boys” helping run the big press that printed the Journal at the rear of the Scott Street office and carrying heavy bundles of papers.
Paying tribute to her, Greg wrote that his wife worked “long hours on a man-sized job, while cheerfully putting up with being ‘married to a newspaper’.”
Often the press would break down. Then it was all hands on deck as Greg, Zig and the rest of the team worked through the night to ensure the paper always “hit the streets“.
When Greg bought the Journal, the circulation was 950. By 1961 paid circulation had risen to 6500, making the Journal one of the largest circulating provincial newspapers in Victoria.
In 1939 Marg Stork was a teenager and at the beginning of her long career with the newspaper. He was her editor and mentor for 25 years.
In 2013, just a year before she died, Marg wrote about Greg for her column, A Moment with Marg.
“Greg did not believe in sensationalism. His reporting was concerned with people and their daily lives. Their ups and downs and all aspects of community life.”
Greg sold the Journal to Rupert Murdoch’s Cumberland Newspaper Group in 1961, staying on as editor.
He ‘retired’ in 1964 but continued contributing news, sporting and social items to the paper up until his death in 1993.
In his final address to readers as editor, Greg described his career as a journey along the “inky way”.
Before signing off, Greg noted that in 1965 the Journal would celebrate its century.
“It has been a pleasure to contribute in some small way to its achievements. May it go to even greater success – and may it always merit it.“
