The first issue of the Sunday Observer (Sep. 14, 1969) was critiqued by The Canberra Times. Newspaperman Rohan Rivett (picturede) assembled the report. He was the elder son of Sir David Rivett, and his wife Stella (née Deakin). He was a grandson of the former Prime Minister of Australia, Alfred Deakin, and of the Rev. Albert Rivett (1855-1934), a boted pacifist. Rivett was qualified to write the review. He was Editor of the Adelaide newspaper, The News, from 1951 to 1960.

In 1960 he was sacked by Rupert Murdoch, who considered him unreliable and uncontrollable. Rivett’s report – Mel-bourne has Sunday paper: Features, sport – but no scoops’.
“Melbourne’s citizens were confronted with something new as they strolled last Sunday morning to the milk bar or “the deli” for their fresh Sabbath loaf,” Rivett wrote in then broadsheet.

“With minimum publicity – remember the big dailies had announced Sunday papers but produced nothing – Sydney’s ebullient Gordon Barton, Tjuringa Securities and IPEC chairman and Australia Party backer, was suddenly offering Melbourne its own Sunday tabloid. Sunday Observer was banned by the newsagents. But at 12c (15c air interstate) it promised attractive pickings to the Sunday shopkeepeers – at least 50 per cent more a copy than for the Sydney Sundays which many have been selling in recent years.

“A check along Whitehorse Road on Monday morning showed that one had done “very well”, the next hold sold 87 out of 100 delivered, the next “more than 60”. Apparently there was plenty of interest. What shook the shop-keepers – who keep open until 9 o’clock or later on Sundays – was that shortly after six an Observer truck had swooped down and gone off with all unsold copies as returns.

“The removal of the commodity with hours of good selling time remaining may be some shrewd new technique of creating a scarcity or hard-to-get demand. It certainly annoyed a number of vendors and their disappointed customers who heard of the availability of the new journal only from friends or neighbours on Sunday evening or even on Monday morning.

“Sunday Observer Mark I is a fairly conventional 64-page tabloid. It is incomparably more handsome than its short-lived predecessor, the Greek-run Post which seemed doomed from birth. It is vastly better printed and the proof-reading of my edition was particularly good. Such gifted writers as Cyril Pearl, Don Whiting-ton, David Martin, Niall Brennan, Canberra’s Alan Fitzgerald and others contributed to the first issue and is an oddly modest corner of page five, Gordon Barton, as publisher, laid down a series of unexceptional ideas and objectives for his paper.

“Most of the stories were brief to the verge of scrapiness. However, there was a good in-depth survey of white discrimination and prejudice against Aborigines at Dareton on the Murray over a two-page spread and an equally intriguing two pages cabled out direct from Friday’s London New Statesman. There was an eight-page colour comic lift-out and an almost total avoidance of the sex-drug-crime stories bordered by mammiferous pictures which are a feature of some Sunday tabloids. The day’s sport seemed to be handled reasonably competently and concisely, especially for a first effort, and the offset reproduction of pictures and type was, as usual, excellent.

“It is only fair to say that seven people, aged 18 to 53, to whom I submitted the paper on Monday expressed disappointment. There really wasn’t a great deal of reading in it and several stories that looked promising petered out rather like creekbed waterholes in a drought. Technically, Mr Barton and his editor, the able author of The Land Boomers, Michael Cannon, will doubtless make one firm resolution about future editions. They need a revolution in layout.

“For a first issue advertising was meagre through the 64 pages. Classified advertisements in all forms did not fill these pages and Walton’s was the only big store that took display space. The first issue of any new paper is notoriously prone to bugs, gremlins and minor disasters of kinds well known to every experienced newspaperman. The disappointment hanging over the Sunday Observer is that the staff appears to have done a mighty job in actual production, beating almost all the traditional traps.

“But the competitive flavour, the news stories, the scoops or original lines were not there. Survival beyond a few months may need (i) a patient willingness to accept continuous losses on the part of Mr Barton; (ii) a very swift resolution in present layout together with (iii) a sharp infusion of meaty content editorially.”