Up Front

with the Editor

Norfolk Islanders it seems will shortly have a choice of two local newspapers. That’s something that few communities of only 1,700 people enjoy.

Ed Howard, who has been a part time resident of the island for six years (the major part has been spent m Sydney, about 1,000 miles to the south-west), last year moved to Norfolk with his wife Alice to begin taking over gradually as editor and proprietor of The Norfolk Islander, which Tom and his wife Tim Lloyd started in 1965. Tom was to concen trate on his printing business.

As takeover time approached, Tom and Tim realised they didn’t want to lay down the editorial pen after all.

Ed thinks there may be room for a second paper on the island, and is now preparing the Norfolk Island News to find out whether he’s right.

American-born, Ed and Alice have become Australian citizens, and Ed has handed over to associates the Sydney public relations firm of Edward Howard and Co which he successfully operated for 12 years, so he’s really thrown in his lot with Norfolk Island. In fact as associate editor of the Norfolk Islander he has in recent months introduced a newsier style and layout, and pro duced a number of in-depth inter views.

It’s surprising how many small newspapers can and do exist in Island communities, each with its own flavour, and thus its special appeal, and there is probably no reason why Norfolk Island should be an exception. Most of these Island papers would win no prizes for pro duction standards, being little more than roneoed newsheets, but their charm is in their contents —as regular readers of PlM’s From the Islands Press section will have long since observed. Spades are called spades, sometimes with delightful disregard for the laws of libel.

They usually manage to reflect their Island community, but that doesn t mean their publishers are always appreciated. Tom Lloyd last year was a delegate at the formation of the Pacific Islands News Asso ciation in Suva, and presented a typical address to the gathering—

warm, informative, folksy—in which he made the point, “Tim and I write things as we see them—most times in a friendly, relaxed Pacific Island style, but occasionally with a sting in our tail, which usually sees us ostracised by whoever we have bitten the very next time we walk down the street. But we are human enough to admit that there are times when we agree that possibly we could have said it a little better and both wished we had had a little more expertise. However we try to keep alive our Norfolk way of life.”

Tom described the Norfolk Way of life as he saw it this way: “Due to our geographical isolation Norfolk Island is not really a part of the wider developing areas of the Pacific region—but at the same time it is intensely proud of its heritage as part-Polynesian, and the life style that was carried there by our fore fathers when they left Pitcairn Island to make a new home on Norfolk Many of my readers and I still feei that we can, given the right kind of encouragement, teach many other countries how life should be lived.

“We do not have income tax—yet we have no destitute old persons.

We provide from our own resources a weekly pension, be it ever so small, that allows them to live in dignity.

“There are many other ways in which we look after our own. Even in death, the islanders help dig the grave of the deceased, make the coffin and even provide the hearse for the burial service. All at no cost to the mourners.

“In a changing world, and with more and more of our people tasting the so-called materialistic pleasures of the mainland, and with an ever increasing flow of new settlers bring ing their outside influences to bear on our way of life, the role of the Press as I see it, is not only to act as dispenser of news but also to act as the conscience of the community.

Not only to keep alive the traditions and life-style of our Pitcairn fore bears, but to also remind newcomers and the Government that the people of Norfolk have, with great sacrifice to family relations and personal hard ship kept alive the spirit of Norfolk.”