A legend in NZ newspapers – and football

May 10 update: Jim Mora, host of Radio New Zealand's Afternoons program, interviewed Iain Gillies today. Listen to the interview to hear Iain's story in his own words, in his delightful Scottish accent.

Iain Gillies’ office on the second floor of the Gisbourne Herald’s building is filled with ephemera from his half-century in the news business, as well as his even longer career as a football (soccer) player, manager and coach. The walls are covered with certificates, plaques and news clippings. He points to a postcard of his hometown of Mallaig on the northwest coast of Scotland and mementos of his time as a member of the Glasgow Celtic, a U.K. football powerhouse.

Football brought Gillies to New Zealand but a job at the family-owned Herald (circulation 8,500) kept him here. He answered an ad to play soccer in Gisborne and continued to play after starting work at the Herald in 1959. After a stint as chief reporter (city editor), he became editor in September of 1980. The day I visited the Herald, Gillies was about to write his final leader (editorial) before stepping down as editor. His almost three decades as editor is unmatched in New Zealand in recent years.

Gillies isn’t really retiring. He’ll continue as a part-time sports writer – sharing duties with his son John, who runs a used-book shop a block away from the Herald’s office. And Iain has offered to write an occasional editorial whenever his successor, Jeremy Muir, can’t find time. Jeremy, 36, represents the sixth generation of his family to be involved in newspapers in New Zealand. His father, Michael, is the paper’s managing director.

Journalism runs in the Gillies family. In addition to John, two other sons and a niece also worked at the Herald. Son Angus has written two books of an intended trilogy about a crime spree by a Rastafarian gang on the North Island’s East Coast in the mid-1980s. I just started reading the first volume, a gift from Iain.

Newspapers on the rebound: Michael Muir is the president of the Newspaper Publishers’ Association of New Zealand. He said this week that newspaper advertising is rebounding and readership is strong. He’s optimistic about newspapers, saying they remain a vital credible source of news for Kiwis:

"What we are seeing with the explosion of the Internet is a crying need to distill the blizzard of information and opinions, much of it unreliable to make some sense of it."

The challenge that Muir and his counterparts face is how to attract young readers, used to finding information online, to their printed editions.