Breaking News

Ben Hills

It is now more than 30 years since Graham Perkin’s tragically premature death, but his legacy lives on in every corner of the Australian media. Perkin was, without question, the country’s greatest editor of the 20th century. In his nine years at the helm of The Age, he transformed a venerable but moribund rag into a paper regularly voted one of the world’s ten best broadsheets, alongside such great titles as The Washington Post and The Times of London. He changed forever the way that the media looks at society, and the way that people relate to the media.

In this insightful, vigorous biography, veteran investigative journalist and Walkley Award winner Ben Hills — who worked under Perkin’s editorship for six years — chronicles the life and times of Australia’s most influential newspaper editor, and the history of the newspaper to which he devoted his tremendous talents.

From a little town in Victoria’s dusty Mallee to the door of the Fairfax boardroom, from the twilight of the Menzies era to the death throes of the Whitlam government, from formulaic, moth-balled reportage to socially responsible investigative journalism, Breaking News paints a vivid picture of Graham Perkin’s remarkable career. It is biography at its best, and the personality and energy of this big, bluff cyclone of a man jumps from the pages. Most of all, however, it is a portrait of media power, of the last of the great editors who, by the force of their convictions, made a difference to society — a breed for whom there is no place in today’s corporate media conglomerates, with their focus on cost-cutting and the short-term bottom line.

A cracking story in its own right, Breaking News is an engrossing read, not only for those who remember Perkin and the golden age of Australian newspapers, but also for everyone who reads the paper or watches the news today.

Ben Hills

Ben Hills is one of Australia’s best-known investigative reporters and foreign correspondents. He has been in the business for more than 50 years, principally working for the Fairfax flagships The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald, but also as a producer with Channel Nine’s current-affairs show 60 Minutes. He worked under Graham Perkin’s editorship for six years, establishing The Age’s Insight section as a pioneer in investigative reporting in Australia. He was a correspondent covering the Middle East and Africa in the 1970s, was based in Hong Kong in the 1980s, and was the Fairfax correspondent in north-east Asia in the 1990s. Ben was runner-up in 1989 for the journalist-of-the-year award named after Perkin, and he won the Walkley Award for investigative reporting in 1991. He lives in Sydney.

Website: http://www.benhills.com