The Press: Roll-Your-Own Newspaper

Far back in the tropical wilderness of new Guinea, a jungle newspaper distributor was recently asked by the management of the South Pacific Post (circ. 4,218 twice weekly) if the 50 copies he was getting were enough. “Thank you,” he replied politely, “but I sell only ten to people who read the paper and 40 to people who smoke it.” So much in demand is the Post for its roll-your-own qualities that back copies sell for 7¢ a lb., and the paper can claim title as the world’s most widely smoked publication. It can also claim a first-class journalistic coup. Few more improbable newspaper locales could be conceived than New Guinea, 312,329 square miles of steaming, often impenetrable jungle and snowcapped mountains populated by 2,400,000 natives—90% illiterate—and some 34,000 emigre whites. Yet for nine years the Post has successfully managed to give a voice to an area where news once traveled largely by bush telegraph.

Ants in the Plants. That the Post gets out at all is a minor miracle. Beneath a giant Moreton Bay fig tree in Port Moresby (pop. 7,000), the Post’s termite-honeycombed headquarters has been flooded eight times during monsoons. Twice the composing room has been invaded by serpents—a ten-foot python, a rare and venomous taipan—which were pelted to death by ingots of type metal. One night a horde of winged ants, attracted by the lights, swarmed in to lay a living veneer on the Linotype machines, jam the works with their bodies; a mechanic imported from Australia had to be shipped home with a nervous breakdown.

Such tropical troubles only accent the purpose of the three men who head the paper: Managing Director Edward P. Glover, 35, a former Sydney Morning Herald subeditor; Sydney Businessman Stanley L. Eskell, 41, who put up most of the $74,000 starting capital; and A. E. Stephens, 40, onetime Morning Herald reporter, and Post editor since 1955.

The Post’s columns are as exotic as its habitat, lean hard on local news: the native mother who accused a neighbor of doing in her youngest son; a warning that the dangers of capturing Papuan black snakes far outweigh their medicinal value. Periodically, readers are brought up to date on population losses caused by wild boars, crocodiles, sharks and cannibals. Post advertisers plug canned butter, rainwater tanks, ceiling fans, copra boats and soap, sometimes in pidgin English: “Altaim waswas long sop new bilong im Palmolive.”*

Politicians & Profits. The Post also keeps a sharp and critical eye on the island’s Australian government. “Nobody ever got hurt by free speech except bad politicians and complacent bureaucrats,” said Glover, drawing an early bead on both. His paper constantly needles the administration’s listless native education program, helped earn New Guinea’s Chinese new recognition as suitable candidates for citizenship, patiently runs down every tale of Jim Crow injustice from its colored readers. As vigorous a practitioner as a preacher, the Post four years ago set up a native training program in its composing room (one rule: no loose-flowing laplaps), currently employs 28 New Guineans in Port Moresby at salaries ranging up to $63 a month plus food, lodging, clothing and all the papers they can smoke.

The Post’s bold policy has brought big success—at least in New Guinean terms. Today the company pays a 10% dividend to investors, has assets of $270,000. Last week it let a $22,500 contract for a new brick headquarters. In Port Moresby’s bureaucratic circles, the Post may not be as popular as it is among jungle tobacco hounds, but the saucy voice of New Guinea is never ignored. Confessed one Port Moresby official, in the kind of tribute that Glover, Eskell and Stephens set up shop in New Guinea to earn: “The Post keeps us on our toes.”

* Translation: “Wash all the time with Palmolive.”