Ex-Groat and Courier editor recalls old-style printing and ‘hellish headline scandal’
A former editor of the John O’Groat Journal and Caithness Courier has been reminiscing about his experiences at the local papers in the mid-1980s – a time when computers had still to make an appearance in the newsroom, and when headlines might need to be rewritten if the print workers had run out of certain letters of the alphabet in a particular typeface.
In a new recording for Wick Voices, Jeremy Hodges also recalls a royal visit to mark the 150th anniversary of the Groat and reflects on what he calls the “hellish headline scandal” when he fell foul of the procurator fiscal over a headline that some saw as blasphemous – resulting in a controversy that was picked up by the national and international press.
Jeremy (70), originally from Essex, was editor of the Groat and Courier from 1985 to 1988 and now lives in Falkirk. He found Wick to be “a town of great character with a rich cultural heritage”, adding: “More to the point, the people were very friendly.”
The local newspapers were still printed on site in Union Street at that time and Jeremy says the production staff were “probably the most highly skilled people in the whole building”.
He explains: “At the Groat, pages were still produced in the time-honoured fashion first started by William Caxton of being printed from raised type made of lead.
“This came out of an astonishing Heath Robinson contraption or machine known as a Linotype. It was about the size of a grand piano with all kinds of wheels and gears and levers on it, operated by the typesetter using a keyboard which was like no other you’d even seen – certainly not like a typewriter keyboard.
“Headlines could be tricky because the machinery that we had was ancient and bits were missing. I remember a printer coming down and saying could I possibly write a headline that only had one ‛s’ in it, or otherwise could I accept it in a different font, because they didn’t have enough letters in that particular size of headline. So it was a bit of a jigsaw puzzle just sticking each edition together.”
The Groat and Courier, which had been operating as a bi-weekly since the 1970s, were “a circulation manager’s dream” with healthy sales of both titles.
Jeremy presided over the transition to what was then called “new technology” and introduced his own page-plan designs to make the papers look more modern. He tells of the “creative tension” that sometimes existed between different departments.
“The advertising manager, quite justifiably, felt that the purpose of a newspaper was advertising and the purpose of editorial was to fill the spaces in between the ads, whereas I took the view that the purpose of a newspaper was news and the purpose of advertising was to pay for it,” he says.
In 1986 the Groat was 150 years old and, to mark the occasion, the Queen Mother visited the Groat office to meet the staff to see how the papers were produced. Her Majesty was “absolutely tickled pink” by a special front page created in her honour.
The “hellish headline” saga centred on a headline above an otherwise unremarkable story about church fire safety concerns, arising from a meeting of Caithness Church of Scotland Presbytery. There were accusations of blasphemy and the Wick procurator fiscal argued that it constituted a breach of the peace.
“I was a bit flabbergasted because I’d never come across this concept before,” Jeremy recalls. “I was aware of the laws of defamation and of contempt, and what you must not put into newspapers, but I’d never heard of headlines being a breach of the peace.
“If anything that went into a newspaper that upset people was going to be a breach of the peace then newspapers would be committing breaches of the peace all the time.”
The story was reported by newspapers in Fleet Street and far beyond. The Daily Telegraph even published a front-page cartoon showing the Devil reading the Groat.
But the matter did not end up in court.
Jeremy says: “In some ways this was amusing and entertaining, but really this was the kind of infamy that I wasn’t looking for.”
The recording, running to 35 minutes, can be heard at www.wickvoices.co.uk
Wick Voices is the online oral history project of the Wick Society. It began in 2016 and there are now 439 recordings freely available to listen to, with more being added regularly. Collectively they have been listened to more than 535,000 times.
The interviews cover a wide range of topics with people from all walks of life, from the Wick area and other parts of Caithness.
