The Daily Advertiser

About

When, in 1868, the first edition of the Wagga Wagga Advertiser and Riverine Reporter rolled off the presses, its co-founders had little idea they had begun what is now an institution in the Australian newspaper industry. The co-founders, wealthy pastoralists Thomas Darlow and Auber George Jones, were men of ambition, vision and destiny. Yet they could not have envisaged the impact their four-page broadsheet, which sold for sixpence, would have on the town it served. The Advertiser, like Wagga, has moved with the times and it is a household name in the community. In many respects the first issue of the paper on October 21, 1868 was unique in the country journalism of that era. Firstly, the mechanical qualities were distinctive and attractive. The paper was clearly printed on fine white paper of a costly character. This made instant appeal to a public which had been more or less accustomed to an ill-printed newspaper on inferior paper.