Former editor, Ina Randall
When one had been involved at the birth of a product and that product is still going strong 40 years later, one cannot help but feel a certain pride.
The PE Express came into being four decades ago as one of several so-called knock-and-drops in the Port Elizabeth (now Gqeberha) area. At the time, television was eating into the advertising market of traditional newspapers, and the community papers were founded to counteract the loss of revenue experienced by the print media.
The concept was new. Once a week, thousands of “little papers” had to be popped into mailboxes – free of charge. Community news was the focus.
On Wednesdays, residents expected to find an “Apple” in their mailbox.
The pet name came from the apple in the paper’s masthead. It soon became known colloquially as the “Apple Express”. At some stage the apple was dropped.
I was totally delighted to be told that it was now going to be reinstated.
The Express survived where its competition did not – and it is now surviving the much greater onslaught of social media competition. We must have done something right all those years ago.
I cannot claim to have been one of those who laid the first bricks. I was kind of related by marriage. My husband Peter (who died some 15 years ago) was the first editor, and with his editorial colleagues, Mariette van Manen, now living in Cape Town, and Trudie Wegner, still living in our city, he worked hard at determining what the people of the then Port Elizabeth wanted in a community newspaper.
By the time I became editor they (with the enthusiastic support of the advertising, production and distribution teams) had built such a dynamic source of information that the Apple had become a Bay institution.
All one had to do to fill a hall or a bus was to get word into the Express.
Competitions, jaunts around the country side, theatre awards or overseas tours – the readers participated with overwhelming verve.
I am deeply grateful to current publisher Bettie Giliomee-Rossouw for allowing me this contribution.
May PE Express remain a favourite Gqeberha Institution.
