Printers, journalists and editors came together to reminisce and share memories of the good old days.

Wayne Gregson, who was editor from 1995 to 2002, said he looked back on his time at the Advertiser with enormous fondness and pride.

"It was quite simply the most exciting time of my life," he said.

"I've never been so impressed with how a good newspaper can actually act as an instrument of reform in its community."

Glenn Mildren started his 30 year stint at the Advertiser in 1979 as a hand and machine compositor and remembers the newspaper as a great, social place to work.

"The quicker we'd work, the quicker we'd knock off of a night, so we'd work probably six hours a night, work hard and fast, knock off and then we'd go to someone's house for a beer or go out the back and play cards, it was a very social environment, that was one of the best things about working there," he said.

"One night someone went down to my car, and just for a joke the guys from the press room got big reels of paper and wrapped the car up with paper, completely wrapped it up, I had to rip the paper off to get in."

Fellow compositor Reg Ricardo spent his first few months working as a office boy before starting his apprenticeship in 1956.

"Part of the machine compositors job was to do mark up, layouts as well as make up the pages, advertisements and that sort of thing, and everything came through our department," he said.

"But in 1984 it went computerised and it all went to sitting in front of a screen and it took a lot of the sociability out of it too, it went sterile."

Even though times have changed somewhat since his days as editor, Gregson is optimistic about the future of journalism.

"I think journalism will always find a way to prevail, it always will because it always has," he said.

"A lot of people get all angry about it but journalism's fine. As long as people have a regard for the truth and want to serve the public and make sure nasty things don't happen, journalism will prevail."