September 16, 2026
Welcome
This website is currently undergoing a quick refurbishment. The full archive will soon be restored. Welcome to the personal scrapbook website for Australian media man Ash Long. As we progressively construct this website, you are welcome to explore its collection of stories and photos. Discover details of Ash’s 56-year career in the media in Australia…
Read More about WELCOME to my scrapbookFamily
Here is the eulogy delivered for Marjory Long at her funeral service on Monday (Feb. 20): Hello everyone. On behalf of my sister Denise, my brother Greg, myself, and our families, thanks for being here today to pay tribute to the life of Marjory Norah Long. We wish to thank our funeral celebrant Simon Beasy,…
Read More about Vale Marjory LongFriends
The Dumbrell family has tonight issued a statement confirming the death of Garry Dumbrell, 64, after a tragic accident at home. To us he was always ‘Jack’. A nickname based on Jack Brabham, the fastest racing driver of our teenage times.Garry Lakeland Dumbrell was the fastest young man of our teenage times in the 1970s.He…
Read More about Vale Garry DumbrellCareer: The Phoenix
When the disastrous Black Saturday bushfires hit on February 7, 2009, Ash Long and Local Media Pty Ltd were quick with their community service response. A free weekly newspaper was created where everything was free for locals affected by the disaster in which 173 lives were lost. Ash Long provided free weekly newspaper advertising for…
Read More about $1.3 million in ads donated after Black Saturday firesNewspapers
The Long family adopted a publishing motto after it re-launched the Melbourne Observer business on Wednesday, September 14, 2002. “For the cause that lacks assistance,‘Gainst the wrongs that need resistance,For the future in the distance,And the good that we can do” The motto appears atop Editor Ash Long’s weekly column, Long Shots. The motto had…
Read More about Story behind our company mottoCareer: BBC
From 1997-1999, I was Executive Producer of television programs including Mansfield’s Melbourne, hosted by the late Bruce Mansfield. I was proprietor of the TV programs, and also The Advertiser newspaper group. In early January 1999, I arranged air travel to London in exchange for promotion in my media products. Here is a copy of a…
Read More about Broadcasting from the BBCCareer: Nightline
The 3AW Nightline radio program, hosted by Bruce Mansfield and Philip Brady, was a ratings juggernaut. Year after year, the 8pm-Midnight show consistently topped the ratings surveys for audience numbers. I had met Bruce Mansfield in 1996 at an Old Ivanhoe Grammarians Football Club match at Chelsworth Park, where he appeared as a lonely character,…
Read More about Radio program had as many readers and viewers as it had listenersCareer: Yea Chronicle
Our energetic 10-year proprietorship of The Yea Chronicle tweaked the noses of some vested interests in the prosperous Victorian valley. So much so that interests led by the politically active Don Lawson tried to set up an opposition publishing group in 1990. Don Lawson, well-known in Liberal Party circles, was a local Yea Shire Councillor….
Read More about Muddying the watersCareer: Syme Community Newspapers
The final paragraph of a report in The Age (March 24, 1988) noted: “It was disclosed yesterday that a group of Victorian businessmen was considering an offer for Syme Community Newspapers. Mr Ash Long, a Victorian country newspaper publisher, said he would look at a cash purchase of the suburban newspaper group, which includes the…
Read More about ‘Cash purchase of suburban newspaper group’: reportCareer: Sunday Advertiser
Bruce Mansfield opened ‘Uncle Roy’s Nostalgia Boutique’ at Eaglemont in August 1985, at the height of his 3AW breakfast career with John Blackman. We were there to take photos for the short-lived Sunday Advertiser published by Arthur Preusker. 3AW’s outside broadcasts always draw a crowd. Listeners gathered for an auction of items from Uncle Roy’s Nostalgia Boutique….
Read More about Uncle Roy opens his nostalgia boutiqueCareer: Yea Chronicle
Taking over from the Dignams Monday, April 2, 1984 I bought The Yea Chronicle business from long-time publisher Thomas Michael Dignam on April 2, 1984. Raised on farmland that now incorporates the Yea Golf Course, Thomas Michael Dignam was Yea’s most enduring newspaper editor. Tom was son of William and Mary Dignam. His older brother was Willie;…
Read More about Taking over from the DignamsCareer: Victorian Media
Victorian Media Corporation was an ill-conceived roller coaster ride to Hell-and-back in the 22 months between September 1983 and June 1985. Victorian Media started as a little-thought-out dream to replicate a community newspaper network across the state, as a carbon copy of the great Leader group of suburban newspapers in metropolitan Melbourne. But in less…
Read More about Roller coaster to hell and backCareer: Leader Newspapers
In the early 1980s, I was Regional Manager of Leader Associated Newspapers Pty Ltd. The Registered Office of Leader was 160 Whitehorse Rd, Blackburn.The Northern Group – comprising eight newspapers – was based at 543-545 High St, Northcote. The Advertising Staff Contacts list from the time was: Regional ManagerAsh Long Area Manager – Diamond Valley,…
Read More about Follow The LeaderCareer: Nation Review
Nation Review had more lives than the proverbial cat. Fringe publisher Geoff Gold took over the publication, converting it to a monthly A4 publication, with former GTV-9 publicist an ex-Sunday Observer editor Chris Forsyth at the helm. Mini-magnate Peter Isaacson tried to reincarnate ‘The Ferret’ with Michael Worner and Ian Finlayson as his publishers of The Review. Even…
Read More about End days for The FerretCareer: Farrago
Universities had been long renowned for ‘skit’ or parody newspapers. During my brief tertiary career at the University of Melbourne (1975-77), The Uni Star made its debut. And I guess I could have perhaps been slightly responsible. Maybe. Farrago was the weekly campus newspaper at Melbourne, and in 1976 it was under the joint (good…
Read More about ‘Uni Star’ enters … and exitsCareer: Maxwell Newton
Publisher Maxwell Newton “thought that printing comic books would be an easy way to make money back in 1975”, says Daniel Best in his 2014 book, The Amazing Rise & Spectacular Fall of Newton Comics. Maxwell Newton was publishing the Sunday Observer newspaper in Melbourne, and desperately looking for work to occupy his presses for the other six…
Read More about Comic Conversations with Maxwell NewtonCareer: Farrago
ustralia had an unlikely TV star and Gold Logie winner in Norman Gunston in 1975. The Gunston character first appeared as a minor character to appear in a single sketch in the second series of the cult Australian TV comedy series The Aunty Jack Show in 1973. Cast member Garry McDonald portrayed Gunston as a dull and…
Read More about Norman Gunston, multu-media personalityCareer: Sunday Observer
A clear snapshot of the mindset of Observer publisher Maxwell Newton is given in the interview I conducted with him in 1975. I was aged 18. The interview was published in Farrago, the University of Melbourne on June 4, 1975. “Publisher of the “soar-away” Sunday Observer, Maxwell Newton now holds the position of director of the newly formed Workers Party. “Quoting…
Read More about ‘Too bloody bad if anyone gets mangled’Career: Farrago
As an ambitious 18-year-old journalist, I requested an interview with Australia’s top-rating TV star of the time, Ernie Sigley. It was 1975 and Sigley was besting the ratings with a twice-weekly variety program at GTV-9 Melbourne. Sigley was not granting any interviews at the time … except this one to me, organ-ised through the channel’s…
Read More about Exclusive interview with Ernie SigleyCareer: Music Week
Flashback to the Sunbury Music Festival Sunday, January 27, 1974 In the early 1970s, the Australian pop music scene was lively, and one of the annual highlights was the Sunbury Pop Festival. Ahead of the 1972-73 festivals, in my part-time job with The Review/Nation Review newspapers, I had seen the Festival tickets being printed at Stockland Publishing…
Read More about Flashback to the Sunbury Music FestivalCareer: Sunday Observer
Melbourne Observer proprietor Maxwell Newton recruited award-winning journalist John Sorell (pictured) in the early 1970s to edit the independent Sunday weekly newspaper. I was a teenager working as a ‘casual’ in the Richmond printery. First working from offices in St Kilda Rd, then briefly above Waverley Offset Printers, then at Newton St in Richmond, Sorell led…
Read More about There’s a bear in thereSunday News
When Gordon Barton closed the Sunday Observer newspaper in 1971, Maxwell Newton was quick to replace it with the Melbourne Observer newspaper within a fortnight. Newton enlisted Victorian Football League identity Harry Beitzel to build the sports section of the newspaper for a sports-mad Melbourne readership. This was still an era of all VFL matches…
Read More about Footy Week morphs into Sunday Sport, Sunday NewsCareer: Bush and Coach Society of Victoria
Aged 14, my first published feature article ‘Focus On Reservoir’ was published in the June 1971 edition of Bus and Coach News Sheet (Bus and Coach Society of Victoria). This was less than two years after I had started part-time work at Gordon Barton’s Sunday Observer newspaper. “A partnership known as Reservoir Motors was formed…
Read More about My first published feature articleCareer: Scandal
On Monday, July 6, 1970, the first printed copies of Scandal were offered to fellow Ivanhoe Grammar students at 5 cents per printed copy. With a salesman’s air of arrogance, a hand-written poster declared: “Everyone! Bring 5 cents next Monday, July 6, for your copy of The 2nd Form Scandal. “We regret to inform that…
Read More about 13-year-old boy publisher rushes into printCareer: Regal Press
Richmond printer and publisher Dern Langlands gave me a job at Regal Press – at the princely sum of $1.50 per hour – as a hand-inserter (‘collator’) on his Postscript Weekender and All Sports Weekly publications. I would wag school on a Thursday afternoon. The job was simple: insert a pre-printed section of the newspaper into another. It was…
Read More about Dodgy days with DernNewspapers
A card table provided the artwork paste-up area when Margaret Falkiner (Wilkins) launched the first edition The Melbourne Trading Post newspaper on November 7, 1966. One typewriter, one phone, four kids underfoot. The eight-page newspaper first appeared fortnightly with a small collection of For Sale ads, sourced mainly from neighbours and friends. “Fifty thousand copies of The Trading…
Read More about For Sale. Trading Post group. GC. $636 millionCareer: Leader Newspapers
As an executive at Leader Newspapers from 1978-1983, Managing Director Don Brown often gave me ‘intelligence’ projects. Sometimes I knew the project objective; sometimes I had to work blind. I was a frequent visitor to the Corporate Affairs Office to investigate the records of various companies that held the interest of Don Brown and his…
Read More about Brainchild of printer, real estate agentTelevision
Just two weeks after I was born in October 1956, Dan Webb and Eric Pearce were the first two men to go on air for the opening night of new Melbourne television station, HSV-7. That was Sunday, November 4, 1956. ‘Danny’ Webb was a favourite in our household. He had been the ‘Daybreak Dan’ breakfast…
Read More about My mate ‘Daybreak Dan’Career: Leader Newspapers
In 1983, at age 26, when I departed as Leader Newspapers’ Manager at Northcote, their associate company Broadglen Publishing Company gave me a ‘going away’ present. My own newspaper, News-Pix Weekender. Broadglen had been publishing this free spoiler newspaper in the Bacchus Marsh-Macedon Ranges region to fight a competitor, the Telegraph group operated by independent…
Read More about Broadglen newsmen split from LeaderCareer: Leader Newspapers
For a time in the late 1970s-early 1980s, I was working at Leader Newspapers as it merged with the Progress Press group. The merger brought more problems than anticipated solutions. The amalgamated group soon split, with the demerged Leader adding three suburban newspapers (Progress Press, Chadstone Progress, Waverley Gazette) to its collection, and the reconstituted…
Read More about Works in ProgressCareer: 3AK
Good Guys and Godbotherers: The 3AK Story I published Good Guys and Godbotherers in 2002, about the time of the 70th anniversary of Melbourne radio station 3AK.The project does not seek to trace the radio station’s history after it became SEN 1116 (Sport Entertainment Network).– Ash Long. January 2021. 2002 Edition.Introduction.This is a 45,000-word E-book about the rich…
Read More about Good Guys and Godbotherers: The 3AK Story