Track the Melbourne media as you may, and ironically – and sadly – there has been little other than formal notices to mark the death of fourth-generation newspaperman John Horace Mott, who died on June 12 aged 98.
He had been born in 1926 in the Melbourne suburb of Northcote, where newspapers were already in the family’s blood.
Grandfather Decimus had bought Northcote’s Leader Budget, having sold his share of the Albury Border Mail, which he had launched with brother Hamilton in 1903 – a “who goes” choice reputed to have been taken on the toss of a coin – and went on to build the suburban group acquired by the Herald & Weekly Times company for $57 million in 1986, itself finally acquired by Rupert Murdoch’s News Limited that year.
John Mott joined the family business at 18, but then headed to Canada, where he worked as a reporter-photographer, and in the US for a Detroit advertising agency.
When he returned to Melbourne in 1950 – historian Rod Kirkpatrick wrote after an interview in 2001 – Mott, “not feeling he was a born salesman” had been reluctant to take over as the Leader’s advertising manager, but later was to later become director, publisher and finally chairman. Over the years, the Melbourne branch of the family established seven suburban papers, contributing to News’ domination of the suburban market.
All of that is history, none of which would have happened not great grandfather George Henry Mott caught a ship from London in 1853 with new bride Allegra – whom he had married in secret after being warned off in a stern exchange of letters, by her father – and younger brother Arthur, their colourful story retold by Tony Wright for the Australian Media Hall of Fame.
In Australia, the 22-year-old covered the gold rush for the Argus and then the Melbourne Herald, but looking for greater riches, moved to Albury and established the Border Post newspaper in 1856, reportedly having crossed the Murray and the state border in a bark canoe. Adept at buying and selling newspapers, he bought into the Hamilton Spectator in 1869, became managing director of newspaper distributor Gordon & Gotch, and later set up the Kew Mercury (1888), retiring two years later. Both he and Allegra, who had borne him 14 children, died in 1906.
The Border Morning Mail was bought by publisher of the Sydney Morning Herald and The Age, John Fairfax Holdings – now part of Nine Entertainment – in 2006 for $162 million.
Peter Coleman
Pictured: An early edition of the Northcote Leader, which had merged with free distribution The Budget when Decimus Mott bought it; (below) lighting the candles on the Border Mail’s 60th anniversary cake in 1963 are Libby Mott, David Mott (second and third from left) with Gordon Dowling, Cleaver Bunton and Pat Brennan