It was the mid-60s and The Canberra Times had a problem.
Rupert Murdoch was setting up The Australian just up the road on Mort Street: a fresh, modern-looking broadsheet with a national agenda. The Times, serving the national city since 1926, had a local challenger.
It prompted the Shakespeare family, which established the Times, to sell the paper in April 1964 to Fairfax & Sons, the powerful family business behind The Sydney Morning Herald.