Real news

Back in the old days, the mainstream news media do actually report on real news once in a while (as one of my chess friends would say tongue in cheek). This was the front page of The Star newspaper on 19 October 1978 although for the most part, the news media generally ignored news items on chess. 

In 1978, I was already working in Ban Hin Lee Bank and had left behind my friends from National Echo (previously known as Straits Echo Press). Nevertheless at the end of each day, during the course of the match between Anatoly Karpov and Viktor Korchnoi, I would drop by the newspaper firm to see the guys in the teleprinter room and pick up the unwanted chess stories from the waste basket. "You can have them," they told me because the sub-editors did not consider the day-by-day chess reports from the news wires (AFP and others) newsworthy enough for print. Not even when Karpov won the match. So I had amassed a big collection of the stories from this match. Only The Star thought it significant enough to report the end of the match on their front page (see below).