NEWS: Max McAuslane RIP

By MARK McLAUGHLIN
Edinburgh Evening News
13 January 2009

FORMER Edinburgh Evening News editor Max McAuslane, who as a young reporter was the first journalist at the scene when Rudolf Hess landed in Scotland, has died at the age of 97.

Mr McAuslane, who lived in Mayfield but was latterly in a care home in Haddington, retired from the Evening News in 1976.

He spent 16 years as editor and was the first at the helm of the combined Evening News and Evening Dispatch in 1963 following the papers' merger.

Family and former colleagues said the defining moment of his career was when he was sent to investigate the mysterious landing of Hitler's right-hand man in a German aircraft near Eaglesham, Renfrewshire, in 1941.

Mr McAuslane was an office junior with the Daily Record in his native Glasgow at the time and ended up breaking one of the biggest stories of the war.

Alone in the office when the story broke, he was sent to Eaglesham to secure a phone line and wait for a more senior reporter to arrive at the scene, but ended up reporting the story himself. For many years after the incident, he would receive calls from other journalists looking for comment whenever Hess hit the headlines, leading colleagues to joke that he should perhaps relocate his office to Hess's cell at Spandau Prison.

That early wartime scoop was to be the start of a long and distinguished career.

Mr McAuslane's daughter Fiona Steele, 63, said: "He was highly regarded as one of Scotland's great newspapermen and a devoted family man.

"He was in newspapers all of his life, beginning as a junior reporter at Clydebank Press, then as news editor of the Daily Record and then The Scotsman, before going on to become the first editor of the merged Edinburgh Evening News and Evening Dispatch. He had a long and happy retirement at his home in Edinburgh. We will all miss him."

During his time at the Evening News, he was at the helm when Princess Alexandra helped to celebrate the paper's centenary in 1973.

Hamish Coghill, who was his news editor for six years, recalled: "He was a superb newspaperman, particularly when it came to knowing where there was a story. He had been a great reporter in his day. He always had a great eye for a story and he knew when there was something to be dug out.

"He made sure his news desk was on top of everything and he was a hard taskmaster, but he also knew his job very thoroughly on the news-gathering side."