By CASEY NEILL
IT’S rare enough for a company to last 100 years, but to still be owned and run by the one family?
“But this company has had the ability to take over one’s life and the families to know nothing else,” Star News Group managing director Paul Thomas said.
“It has also provided each generation the ability to be part of and make a difference to the community.”
Star News Group south east division editor Garry Howe said Paul’s great grandfather and company founder, Albert Edward Thomas, clearly had ink running through his veins.
He launched the Berwick Shire News and Pakenham and Cranbourne Gazette in September 1909 with a promise to provide a genuine voice of the community.
“To voice the grievances of the community, with a view to obtaining a better condition of affairs all round, will be our constant endeavour,” he said in his first editorial.
“We shall on occasions faithfully and fully, as our space will permit, aim at chronicling all local events.
“Our pages will ever be open to fair and honest criticism, so that on all questions both sides may be presented, yet always rigidly excluding from our other columns everything that personally reflects on the good name and fame of any citizen.”
Mr Howe said these were the overriding principles adopted by the next generation, the one after that and were still upheld today.
“Flicking through the old papers, it became apparent that in covering the news of the week, the Gazette never shirked an issue, rarely sensationalised and generally reflected rather than shaped opinion,” he said.
Mr Howe said the company’s longevity was a testament to the Thomas family’s work ethic, professionalism and culture instilled over the generations and the determination to uphold the principles outlined by Albert in that first editorial on 8 September 1909.
Albert’s son Herb was 14 years old at the time and unknowingly embarked on a 62-year dedicated service to Pakenham and district to become a newspaper man of distinction.
He became the principal of the business when Albert died in 1948.
Ian Thomas was the family’s third generation to run the company. He served as managing director for 20 years and a director for more than 60 years.
In October 1950, as he neared completion of his Leaving Certificate year, he was told he had two choices – join the local branch of the Commercial Bank or be part of the family newspaper business.
“Of course, I chose the family business, which became a very big part of my working life until my retirement at the end of 1999,” he said.
When Herb died suddenly in 1979, Ian’s wife Dorothy left her teaching position at Pakenham Consolidated School to join him at the Gazette office.
Soon Dorothy took over the role as editor-in-chief, a position she held until her retirement in 1997.
“I knew nothing about the industry into which I was suddenly thrown, apart from the knowledge gained by listening to Ian and his family,” she said.
Former Star sub editor and chief of staff Liz Hart said more upheaval occurred at the turn of the century than at most other times in the company’s history.
“This was the time I joined the Thomas family enterprise,” she said.
She watched the family expand into new markets and embrace new technology.
“In my first year of work at the Gazette, computers would replace typewriters in the editorial department,” she said.
“Within a few more years the internet would prevail, and by early in the new millennium media convergence would threaten the entire newspaper industry.
“The most dynamic period in the history of print media had begun.”
And this “dynamic period” continues today.
Paul Thomas became the family’s fourth generation to run the business in 2000 and in the past two years has expanded the company’s coverage into New South Wales and Queensland.
Last month, he welcomed the 148-year-old Dandenong Journal into the Star News Group family.
