It’s our birthday: Sydney’s Daily Telegraph is 140 years old
The Daily Telegraph is celebrating its 140th birthday and will this week revisit many of the momentous occasions that have occurred on our watch.
The world’s great cities are known for their emblematic buildings. Sydney has its Opera House. New York is characterised by the Empire State Building. The Eiffel Tower serves as elegant visual shorthand for Paris.
But some defining structures are not made of metal, bricks or tiles. They are instead made of information, insight and ideas.
Since its foundation in 1879, The Daily Telegraph has been as much a part of Sydney as our harbour and beaches, which in the year of our masthead’s launch, were rather less populated than they are now, 140 years later.
Sydney in 1879 was home to only about 350,000 people. Our entire nation’s population was somewhere close to two million, less than half our city’s current total.
Even from those earliest days, The Daily Telegraph precisely reflected the energetic, competitive and irrepressible nature of our city.
Beyond our boundaries, The Daily Telegraph has also brought to Sydney news of the planet’s most transformative events.
Consider the sweep of history covered during the past 140 years.
When The Daily Telegraph launched, the Boer War was still two decades away. The Daily Telegraph was there, and we were there for World War I, the World War II and conflicts in Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq.
In fact, The Daily Telegraph was literally shaped by one of those seismic conflicts.
Paper restrictions during World War II compelled the paper to cut its size from broadsheet to tabloid, a format that exists to this very day.
Consider also the technological and creative advances we have witnessed in The Daily Telegraph’s pages.
At our launch, the Wright brothers Orville and Wilbur were respectively just eight and 12 years old. By 1903, they had completed history’s first powered flight. Just 66 years later, Neil Armstrong stepped from Apollo 11 and set foot on the moon.
In Monday’s eight-page wrap and throughout the week, The Daily Telegraph will revisit many of the momentous occasions that have occurred on our watch. These won’t be simple reprints. They will be written in the present tense, to better indicate through a modern perspective the historical nature of those events.
The Daily Telegraph’s story is, of course, more than about history. It is also about a distinctive style that is wholly Sydney. For Sydneysiders, every single edition is essentially an owner’s guide to that day in our city.
This not only involves The Daily Telegraph and its staff. As well, it involves the passion and engagement of our readers, who are at the very core of our mission.
That mission has expanded in recent years to embrace the online realm, where The Daily Telegraph’s presence is ever more a shared cause between reporters and readers.
What wonders await during the next 140 years are yet to unfold.
When they do, The Daily Telegraph will be there, as we have been throughout Sydney’s growth from a town of 350,000 to a metropolis of 4.6 million.
And we will always speak Sydney’s language. Our voice is — always has been — our readers’ voice.
It’s with their perspective in mind that our reporters, columnists and editors, illustrators, cartoonists and photographers carry out their craft.
The Tele has never condescended to its audience. It has never assumed any lofty, insider’s pedestal.
That’s one reason we have thrived to this day — on the good graces of you, our wonderful readers.
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