Part 27 in our series on William Hills: Hills helps to start a newspaper

There was no thrill to a newspaperman to equal the first issue of a new paper,” City Times founder William Hills wrote of joining the Pretoria News in March 1898.

“Invariably far more ‘stuff’ is prepared than can be published, invariably technical difficulties occur which can make the works foreman declare that never will the paper be out on time, and invariably the editor wishes to include a last-minute scoop.

“Then there is the barely concealed anxiety as to the reception of the new journal – will it catch on?

“On that reception hangs the employment or otherwise of skilled staff in all departments. Money can be lost faster on a newspaper than in any other business.”

Not many journals survived the first year.

ALSO READ: Part 18 in our series on William Hills: Krugersdorp was a legal paradise

Under the enthusiastic lead of Leo Weinthal, the new staff hoped to make his paper the brightest, most entertaining and “scoopiest” production Pretoria had ever known, Hills wrote.

“In 1898, the news was set by hand, although the Pretoria News had ‘a remarkable typesetting machine, the herald of the linotype, the only drawback being that it would not set type at a commercial rate and sometimes even refused to budge at all, much to the pain of Mr Reno, the works manager’.

“We, therefore, could not claim to be the first newspaper set up entirely by machinery, although we certainly had a machine.

Weinthal had decided to start the Pretoria News after managing the Pretoria Press.

Meeting him on his arrival in Pretoria, Hills found him ‘a brilliant conversationalist’.

“When we rose, I felt that at last I had got to the heart of things and would soon mingle with everyone who mattered – of course I mean from a journalistic standpoint.

“Nor was I to be disappointed. Pretoria at this period of its history was a reporters’ paradise.”

As an afternoon paper, the Pretoria News appeared ‘in a modest pink’, and ‘the best proof of public appreciation was that despite its many vicissitudes’ it was still appearing in 1940.

Today, the Pretoria News is owned by Independent News and Media SA and still appears from Monday to Friday, but it is no longer pink.  (Article: Carol Stier).

Next time: A call on the president

ALSO READ: WATCH: The story and passion that went into our centenary cake