Finds A New Home

Pacific Islands Monthly Finds A New Home

THIS issue of Pacific Islands Monthly is remarkable for two reasons it marks the magazine’s 58th birthday, and it is the first published under its new ownership by Fiji Times Limited.

Fiji Times Limited took over Pacific Islands Monthly on July 1 from News Limited in Sydney, to locate the magazine’s headquarters where we believe it belongs in the heart of the Pacific. From this issue onwards, Pacific Islands Monthly will be published in Suva. Administration, advertising and distri bution headquarters also will be in Suva. The magazine’s editorial operation will be transferred from Sydney in stages.

Pacific Islands Monthly will join the Fiji Times Limited stable, comprising the daily English-language Fiji Times and the weekly vernacular publications Nai Lalakai and Shanti Dut.

But this is not the first time Fiji Times Limited, now a wholly owned sub sidiary of News Limited in Australia, has been associated with Pacific Islands Monthly. R W Robson, who founded the magazine in August 1930, bought the Fiji Times and Herald Ltd, as it was then known, in 1956 and owned both publications until he sold out in 1973.

Although it has had other owners since, it is well known that Pacific Islands Monthly owes its survival to its founder who, against great odds, steered it through World War II when many other publishing houses crumbled and firmly established it as “the voice of the Pacific”. Robson, of course, is still warmly remembered in Fiji from his many years as proprietor of the Fiji Times.

So much for the past. For the future we see exciting prospects for this mag azine and its readership. At birth, Pacific Islands Monthly's horizons covered the 17 colonies that made up the South Pacific, as well as Tonga. Today most of these are new nations, still cutting their teeth on the rigours of independence, both economic and political. Much will depend on strong leadership and co operation between the countries not only of the South Pacific, but of the whole Pacific basin. The times are tumultuous but the opportunities are vast.

As the Pacific Islands’ sphere of interest has grown to encompass all of the Pacific Ocean, so has that of this magazine. Its new horizons will reach to the extremities of the Pacific rim . . . and beyond. Now that it is in Fiji the “hub” of the Pacific Pacific Islands Monthly is better placed to offer broader and more up-to-the-moment editorial coverage and analysis of events and devel opments throughout the Pacific.

We plan to broaden the scope of our coverage, too, with greater emphasis on business, travel and people, while maintaining the traditional editorial val ues that have made Pacific Islands Monthly the most authoritative and reliable publication of Pacific affairs.

So to our many thousands of regular readers around the world and the many more to come ni sa bula , and welcome to Fiji!

Geoffrey Hussey Publisher and Managing Editor Suva, Fiji