Fremantle Herald

Fremantle Herald and similar names have been used for three different newspapers serving Fremantle, Western Australia: The Herald (1867–1886), Fremantle Herald (1913–1919) and a current publication, founded in 1989.

James Pearce founded the original Herald in February 1867. It was pitched at a general, more working class readership audience, in contrast to its counterparts in Perth at the time, and featured verse, short stories and serials. Pearce was joined by two co-proprietors, William Beresford and James Elphinstone Roe, both of whom, like Pearce, were ex-convicts. The Herald supported social reform and opposed the convict system. Beresford wrote a weekly column, "Chips by a Sandalwood Cutter", which used a fictional character to challenge the morality of the social elite.

In 1989, Andrew Smith, a local resident who had expressed disquiet with the timidity of existing free local weeklies, used his superannuation and savings to start a new Fremantle Herald. Its initial headquarters were a weatherboard house (since demolished) in East Fremantle. Smith employed young editor Sian Martin and a small team of journalists, production staff and advertising salespeople who all worked cheek by jowl from the corner of King and George Streets, East Fremantle. The first summer in the small house (with no air-conditioning) was fierce and led to plenty of frayed tempers. In 1992 the Fremantle Herald moved to the corner of Cliff and Croke Streets in the West End of Fremantle.

The Fremantle Herald was immediately popular with readers but faced fierce competition to attract sufficient advertising. Smith went further into debt and slashed staff and wages to remain afloat. The risk has paid off and the Herald is reportedly now Fremantle's leading newspaper in terms of readership, revenues and profits.

Smith's company now also publishes three other titles in other parts of the Perth Metropolitan Area: the Melville City Herald, the Cockburn City Herald, and the Perth Voice, all of which are letterbox-distributed weeklies. A two-year trial of a paid-for version of the Fremantle Herald failed to gain support from readers and was abandoned in 2005.

Notes and reference

• Wilde, W H; Hooton, Joy and Andrews, Barry (1994) [1985]. The Oxford companion to Australian Literature (2nd ed.). Melbourne: Oxford University Press. pp. 302. ISBN 0 19 553381 X. 
• Official website