Thirty-one years ago, the Herald went online. Here’s how it happened

July 19, 2026 — 5:00am

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In this second instalment of an occasional series on significant people and moments in the 195 years of the Herald, I talk to Antonio Sarno, who 31 years ago, was the key driver of the establishment of smh.com.au.

Fitz: Tony! You and I worked together 40 years ago in the Herald’s sports department, and I loved two stories you told at our Tony Zuccarini Appreciation Society lunch a few years ago. First, of how you got into computers, and second, the beginnings of smh.com.au. Over to you, Maestro. Everything you say, can and will also be used in a book I want to write on the 200th anniversary of the Herald.

AS: [Laughing.] I am amazed you remember that first story! But yes, I was studying communications at UTS on Broadway, and though I was OK at dating, I noticed that the blokes who did really well were the witty ones. And I thought, “I’m not naturally witty, but maybe I can use computer technology to help me become witty, to tabulate witty things that I could say on dates…” That got me very interested in computers!

Fitz: GUMP! You a goddamn genius, boy! And a star was born. So, once employed by the Herald, you pass briefly through the sports department before becoming the editor of our computer section, whereupon an idea comes to you…

AS: I’d got interested in the whole idea of this thing called the World Wide Web. But back in ’92, the web was something that university students or programmers did – it wasn’t mass-market at all. It was only basically in ’93 when it started taking off, with these new things called hyperlinks, where you could link a word to related information, and go to these things called “websites”! And one day, in late ‘93, on one of the Herald’s two internet connections – because we’d at least come that far – I was sitting there watching a page scroll down from a university website in Los Angeles that blew me away.

Fitz: Why, particularly?

AS: Because it wasn’t just featureless text. It was laid out, with photos – just like a newspaper. It was amazing because, back then, information on the internet before the web was just links to databases of text. There was no formatting, there was no making it look pretty. But my first real epiphany was when MTV launched its website later that year, when one of their video jockeys got sick of not being on the internet, so he registered the name and put the website up himself. And it was so successful that MTV........

© The Sydney Morning Herald