Era when sex and scandal sold Truth

The launch last month of Truth: The Rise and Fall of the People's Paper, by Redmer Yska, will be a walk down memory lane for many older readers of the once lurid "scandal sheet".
For me though, and a host of other former Truth staff, it will be the rekindling of some of the greatest times in our journalism careers - a time when writers were given a virtual free hand to go anywhere and do anything in the quest for stories to titillate the voracious appetite of the readers of a paper that was a journalism trailblazer.
Looking back, I thank my lucky stars I joined what is known in the profession as "old Truth" not long before it flipped over to the lightweight rag that ultimately destroyed its reader base and brought about its demise.
I joined Truth in Auckland when the paper's editor was Russell Gault, who was based in Wellington.
Our Auckland boss was Jim Mahony, a man who had gained a reputation while at Truth, Wellington, as being INL's "hatchet man".
Despite that reputation and undoubtedly being one of the old school, Mahony was a delight to work for, and I had no problem with Gault either.
Sure, they were two rednecks in a nest of rednecks, but the staff of Truth, Auckland, in those days was a happy team who loved their work and who were treated very well by the bosses.
Among my workmates were Graeme Colman - brother of publishing magnate Barry Colman - who we called Laughing Boy because when he got a few beers in he got more and more affable.
Peter Howland, was a young journalist who came to us from Wellington and was later to leave journalism to carve out a very successful career in academia.
In sport we had Hedley Mortlock and our cartoonist Bill Wrathall was, in my view, the best in the country.
We worked hard, and we played hard.
Nothing was sacred when it came to story material.
The Truth hierarchy of that time did allow its political slip to show though.
I remember being instructed by Mahony one day to attend a meeting being held that night in Freeman's Bay. It was a Labour Party branch meeting and high-flying politician Richard Prebble was guest speaker.
My brief was to get the dirt on "Prebble - that rabble-rousing communist".
Despite my protests it was simply a political branch meeting, my brief was emphatically reinforced and I had no option but to go to the meeting, latch on to the slightest hint of left-wing leaning and blow it out of all proportion.
Sex sells newspapers, and sex certainly sold Truth.
In the old days every divorce that went through the divorce courts was reported, with reasons for the marriage split given and even the co-respondents' names in adultery cases published.
Everyone loved to hate Truth for that type of approach to journalism, but they bought the paper.
When Truth was revamped and Alan Hitchens was appointed editor and based in Auckland, we joined the new regime.
New staff came to join us, including Paddy O'Donnell as promotions man and Jack Petley in racing.
The first day Petley joined the staff I tipped him a horse which he promptly told me he wouldn't put stones on. It won and paid $37.
I backed it - he didn't - and the new racing editor took at least three months ribbing over that.
Among the stand-out jobs were raids on the brothels that posed as massage parlours in the days before legalised brothels.
Our mission, for those of us who chose to accept it, was to visit two or three parlours each, get the girls to confess what they did and for how much and expose the parlours as being illegal whorehouses.
Under the guise of being out-of-town visitors working as farm consultants, or whatever, we would book a massage and get the rub from the bevy of naked ladies who presented themselves, but we were strictly forbidden from " going further".
Having determined what services the girls offered, for what reward, we then had to invent a reason for not wanting sexual favours and depart the parlour having paid only for a massage.
It wasn't easy work, believe me, but we got great headlines - "Walk-in Sex for Sale".
Truth journalists got a margin over others, being paid a premium for what was known as danger money, but more commonly referred to by those in the business as "dirt money".
On one occasion after Howland and I had exposed a scam, the heavily tattooed subject of our story found a way into the journalists' room and bellowed out abuse, threatening all sorts of horrors.
Mahony, whose role was then news editor, was having none of that. Although decades older than our adversary and smaller, he bellowed back, "If you want to pick a fight, pick it with me."
The astonished intruder slunk out like a lamb.
Another memorable Truth episode involved David Lange only days after he was elected Prime Minister. He arrived in the office with his regular column but hadn't had a chance to type it.So he appeared with a handful of scribbled notes.
He was directed to the editor's office where he sat behind the typewriter surrounded by wall posters of our page 3 girls.
A young Maori courier delivering a parcel to the editor came up the back stairs and headed straight for the editor's room as usual.
He burst in the door to see the new Prime Minister alone at the editor's desk, finger typing. The look on his shocked face was magic, as was his verbal reaction: "So the bugger has two jobs eh?"
Despite the best efforts of Hitchens and the staff the writing was even then on the wall for "new Truth".
The amalgam of hard news the paper had a reputation for didn't gel with the softer approach that concentrated on television stars and new-age reporting and I, and others, realised it was only a matter of time before the paper slipped away.
It took many more years until eventually the Truth is no more.
Yska, a virtual kid working in the Wellington office when I was a Truth staffer, has taken on a big task with Truth: The Rise and Fall of the People's Paper.
Let's hope he has treated the old lady with the respect I think she deserves.