Journalist profiles
Craig AbrahamPhotographerAge photographer Craig Abraham first became interested in photography when he was a copy boy at The Warrnambool Standard three nights a week after school. After performing work experience at The Age Abraham joined the paper two years later. “When positions came up for cadets, some of the photographers here at the time bandied my name around and I was invited down for an interview.” That was 19 years ago, and he has been here ever since. “I started on the news round and also did sport. I subsequently joined sections, working on Epicure for about three years full time, photographing food and then features. Probably the best thing about working for newspapers is the variety of work.” View Profile |
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Gay AlcornSenior writer*It’s 8.45am, early autumn. Grinding through a “short-lived exercise kick”, Age senior writer Gay Alcorn sat atop an exercise bike at her Arlington home, just five minutes’ drive from Washington’s Pentagon building. It was then that she heard the news. “I was watching CNN,” she recalls. “Judy Woodruff was their anchor, and she was saying that there was a belief at that point that a small plane had hit the World Trade Centre. The tone of it was that it was probably an accident.” “As I watched, they had the footage of the burning building and you saw that second plane going in, which is when it hit everyone that this was a terrorist attack. Shortly after that, it flashed up with Woodruff saying, ‘We’ve had early reports that the Pentagon has been hit’.” View Profile |
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Paul AustinManaging editor (opinion and analysis)*When the newsprint nabobs of Spencer Street knocked back a young country boy for a cadetship in 1981, little did they know he would return one day as deputy editor. Paul Austin always knew he wanted to be at The Age, it just took him a while to get around to it. Austin was born and raised in Kangaroo Ground, a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it hamlet where Melbourne’s north-eastern fringe nudges up against the Diamond Valley. “I grew up on a farm of about 40 acres,” says The Age’s opinion editor. “We farmed all sorts of things – none of them terribly successfully: we tried pigs, we tried dairy cattle, goats, chooks, you name it.” View Profile |
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Joe ArmaoPhotographerAge photographer Joe Armao can be found taking pictures of everything from football to features. View Profile |
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Greg BaumChief sports writerMany will remember the 1966 grand final, how St Kilda snatched its first premiership from Collingwood when a wobbly kick by the Saints’ Barry Breen went through for a behind, handing the side the flag by a point. For Greg Baum it was the day his uncle, a passionate St Kilda supporter, triumphantly paraded around the house describing the events of the match to his six-year-old nephew. Knowing nothing about the team or its history, Baum crossed the Collingwood line to defend a team for which he felt deeply sorry. “Even at six years old I felt ridiculously disappointed for a team that could lose a grand final by a point,” he says, “so I became a Collingwood supporter, knowing nothing of the years of arrogance.” View Profile |
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Vince CaligiuriPhotographerIf it wasn’t for a job working in The Age’s photo sales department, Age photographer Vince Caligiuri could now be an accountant. When he applied for the job he was studying accounting part-time and it took Caligiuri four years of working in the photo library before he became a photography cadet in 1994. View Profile |
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Jo ChandlerSenior writerChandler believes The Age must strive for unique and immediate content to combat a general decline in newspaper circulation worldwide. “Newspapers are facing challenges – how do we retain readers’ interest when there are so many places to go for news and information?” It’s 1993, and Jo Chandler, four months pregnant, stands with her arms crossed, staring sharply at the camera. In the background of the black and white photograph Federal Police officers wearing plastic surgical gloves are searching her desk for “certain documents” relating to the leak of a crime intelligence report. View Profile |
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Tim ColebatchEconomics editorOnce a fortnight Tim Colebatch can be seen hauling several slabs of beer from the Parliament House car park to his second-floor office. He’ll borrow a trolley from down the hall and then stash the boxes under his desk, leaving just enough room for a pair of legs among cans of VB and bottles of Becks and Coopers. And then, perhaps sometime between interviewing a visiting international economist or filing an impassioned opinion piece on global poverty, The Age’s economics editor will set about filling the office bar fridge. It’s not your everyday bar fridge. View Profile |
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Gabriella CoslovichSenior feature & arts writer*While you’re likely to find copies of The New Yorker, Harper’s magazine and of course The Age on Gabriella Coslovich’s desk, the likes of Who and New Idea rarely find a home there. Although she loves to sneak a look at glossy, celebrity magazines in supermarket queues, the thought that newspaper journalism is heading in the same direction disturbs her. “My fear about journalism is that it is increasingly becoming about lifestyle, celebrity and pap,” says Coslovich, a senior feature and arts writer for The Age. She was born into a working-class Italian family, and impressive high-school marks and parental expectations were the catalyst for Coslovich’s foray into medicine at Melbourne University as an 18-year-old. View Profile |
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Sebastian CostanzoPhotographerSebastian Costanzo began his photography career at The Age in 1975. His passion for photography began when he was a student at Richmond High School. “One day there was a lot of foam on the Yarra, more than usual. I borrowed a teacher’s camera, took some pictures and then tried to sell them to The Age.” Months later and still a high school student, Costanzo did manage to sell one of his photographs to The Age and from that point a career in newspaper photography was his ultimate goal. It did, however, take five months of pestering pictorial editor at the time, Ray Blackburn, for a job, before Blackburn finally said: “You’re not going to go away are you?” “I said ‘no’ and he gave me a job as a cadet,” Costanzo says. View Profile |
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Rodger CumminsPhotographerRodger Cummins began his photography career at 15 as a cadet with a local newspaper. “I left school at 15 to become a photographer and I haven’t stopped since,” he says. “I’m 45 now, so it’s been 30 years. I was in local newspapers for 10 years and then I came to work at The Age, a place I always wanted to work.” Cummins spends most of his time taking pictures for The Age’s sections – including Green Guide and A2 and Metro – as well as theage(melbourne)magazine. Recently Cummins took shots of laneways for a feature in theage(melbourne)magazine. “The deadline on the assignment sheet was the very day I was given the job. View Profile |
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Sushi DasState news editor*The story Sushi Das wrote about the City Link fiasco won her a prestigious Melbourne Press Club Quill award and changed the way Victorians will remember one of the grandest and most defining projects of the Kennett era. It was one of many scoops that marked Sushi’s rise to the role of news editor at The Age. Sushi has never wanted to be anything but a journalist, in spite of a faintly hilarious allergy to newspaper ink. One day in April 1999, a brown envelope landed on Sushi Das’ desk. Inside were documents leaked from Data Connection, the call centre responsible for taking e-tag registrations from City Link customers. The documents from her sources confirmed what Sushi’s investigations had indicated: Data Connection was overcharging customers, losing account details and, as a result, was besieged by complaints. View Profile |
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Andrew DysonArtist & cartoonistIn cartooning mode, Andrew Dyson prefers to illustrate the more bizarre stories on the daily news list. “It’s obvious that, as a species, the human race has lost it and we are all going quietly mad. There seems to be a daily occurrence of nutty things happening.” View Profile |
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Margaret EasterbrookNational news editor and chief of staff*Despite a working week centred around The Age cranking up towards its daily deadline, there’s nothing Margaret Easterbrook enjoys more than sitting in the sunshine poring over the weekend papers. “My big treat is sitting in my garden with the papers and a coffee and the sound of the football from Princes Park in the background. I just love it,” she said. This week marks 14 years since Easterbrook joined The Age, where she has covered Melbourne’s ill-fated Olympics bid, worked in the Canberra bureau and, in recent years, been the paper’s chief of staff and national news editor. A passion for people and their stories first sparked her interest in journalism as a child, and sustains her today, on and off the newsdesk. View Profile |
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Farah FarouqueSocial affairs editor*Farah Farouque began the year in Sri Lanka with a 12-hour road trip in a taxi to reach a tsunami-ravaged coastal village. The week leading to the new year had been the most gruelling she’d experienced as a journalist, moving from camp to camp to collect the stories of survivors. “The Boxing Day tsunami was, above all, a human tragedy but it was also an extraordinary news story,” Farouque says. “That is what reporting news comes down to in the end. One day you are at your desk wrangling on the phone with a press secretary or finetuning a feature. The next day you get a late-night summons to pack your bags to report on a story of that scale.” View Profile |
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Bill FarrArt directorBill Farr is a creative man in love with his work. A 2002 Walkley award winner, Bill describes his role in The Age’s redesign process in early-2002 as “facilitator” – bridging the ideas of design change between the consultants and Age staff. His role is also a management position. Managing the ideas of artists and graphic designers, or “keeping creative people happy”, as Bill says, is often a difficult task. View Profile |
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Martin FlanaganSenior news reporter*Martin Flanagan looks perplexed when asked: Exactly what is it you do at The Age? Martin's many masks – novelist, poet, sports writer, “meeter of the people” – blur the traditional distinction between “reporter” and “writer”, and hence his role at the paper is a little unclear. “I don't really know what to call myself, ”Martin says. “A writer who can write for newspapers? A story-teller?” “Story-teller”, it is finally agreed, is probably most apt. View Profile |
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Steve FoleySaturday editor*As a 15-year-old at Bentleigh High School, Steve Foley played bass guitar in a rock band called Pegasus. The lead singer of the group was a young guitarist from nearby Huntingdale High School named Alan Kohler. Kohler would later become editor of The Age and now writes a business column for the paper as well as reporting on business for the ABC. There was no sex and drugs in those days, Foley says, but plenty of Beatles and The Who-inspired rock’n’roll. Foley never got past the garage door with Pegasus, but as a journalist he has soared. View Profile |
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Mark ForbesIndonesia correspondent*The heat, a sticky, muggy, heavy heat hits you on arrival in Jakarta, broken only by the rains – not rain as we know it, but tropical downpours lashing the streets until they turn to rivers and bring even Jakarta’s crazy traffic to a halt. Think the roads in Rome are hectic? Pop a pill and venture through Jakarta, where road rules appear a contradiction in terms. Five lanes of crisscrossing traffic jammed into a three-lane highway, where a horn beep or flash of lights gives a driver apparent carte blanche to hurtle across an intersection or force their way between speeding cars. View Profile |
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Melissa FyfeEnvironment reporter*As a fledgling newshound growing up in rural Tasmania, Melissa Fyfe would hassle local identities, such as red-bearded rubbish tip worker Teddy Towns, for interviews so that she could profile them for the local newspaper or council newsletter. View Profile |
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Michael GordonNational Editor*A few patterns emerge when it comes to reviewing Michael Gordon's career, perhaps the most revealing being his uncanny knack of mixing with future prime ministers before they move into the Lodge. In his early days at The Age, Gordon covered industrial relations, an area that more often than not ended up on the front page. It was a tense time, with Malcolm Fraser's government going head-to-head with the trade unions. The ACTU was led by a vocal Bob Hawke, whose profile was growing by the day. It was perfect stuff for a young reporter to cut his teeth on. “It was a time of long strikes and confrontation and Hawke was just such a towering national figure: charismatic, unconventional and always great copy,” Gordon recalls. View Profile |
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Shane GreenNational news editor*As an enthusiastic ten-year-old Shane Green dictated his stories over the phone to his grandmother who tapped away at her typewriter producing copy for her grandson’s first newspaper – The Bulletin. “I published my own paper when I was in primary school,” Green explains. “When I say paper that glorifies it a little, it was just a foolscap sheet, two sided, which my grandmother used to type up for me.” His own collection of jokes, a bit of fiction and some other bits and pieces made up Green’s two-page publication. “She would type up a number of copies for me with carbon paper and post them to me and then I was able to distribute them the next day at school.” View Profile |
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Rebecca HallasPhotographerRebecca Hallas began her career at The Age six years ago, not as a photographer but as an administrator in the editorial department. Curiosity led her to pursue photography after working in administration and spending three years as the editorial office manager. Hallas studied photography before completing a year-long photography traineeship. She has worked in the photography department ever since. View Profile |
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Tom HylandSenior writerTom Hyland has a steadfast belief that local journalists can report clearly as they find their way through dangerous and fluid situations in murky international areas. His faith is reassuring: because Hyland has been sending them there for most of his career. “You have, I am convinced, a greater connection with your audience if you see (something) and tell that through Australian eyes for an Australian audience,” he said. “There is no doubt about it.” On the first day of Hyland’s stint as foreign editor of The Age, Indonesian President B.J. Habibie announced that East Timor would have a referendum on its independence. View Profile |
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Carolyn JonesNational news editor*Carolyn Jones is used to telling other people's stories. She is uncomfortable with telling her own. Jones began her career 20 years ago and has covered the education sector extensively before becoming The Age's national news editor in 2001. “I probably sound really boring,” says The Age’s national news editor. Jones began her media career 20 years ago, aged 17, as a copygirl at the Sun News- Pictorial. Copypeople were the human computers of the newsroom, taking carbon copies of typewritten stories and distributing them to various editors’ trays. View Profile |
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Eddie JimPhotographerThe Hong Kong high school darkroom that only developed black and white photos was rarely visited by most students, but inside these cramped quarters Eddie Jim watched as his photograph appeared before his eyes. oblivious to the red tint that coloured the dark room, Jim carefully lifted out the first picture he had ever printed. from that day on, he was hooked to the darkroom — and to photography. Jim’s dad bought him an old German camera to occupy his time and by the time he was 14, Jim had chosen a career as a press photographer. “I thought press photographers looked so cool. They always had two or three cameras around their necks and people would look and say: Oh wow! He’s a photographer!” It was a different story when Jim — after opting out of university to do a full time photography course — finally became a press photographer. View Profile |
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Karen KissaneSenior writerKaren Kissane was a 12-year-old Catholic schoolgirl when a teacher called her aside one day to tell her that she was the best reader in the class, but that she wouldn’t be able to do any of the readings at a special church service with the bishop because she was a girl. In those days, as a female, she was not even allowed to serve on the altar, much less speak from it. “I sometimes wonder if that’s why I’m in journalism today,’’ she says, “because I was told that, as a girl, I couldn’t have a voice. Maybe I’ve been pushing against that ever since.’’ Just recently, Kissane, now a senior writer with The Age, found herself thinking again about women’s voices when she covered the story of a woman who had been silenced absolutely when she was killed by her husband. View Profile |
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Viki LascarisPhotographer*It was the darkroom with its trays of chemicals and images appearing from the developer that first lured The Age’s Viki Lascaris to photography. “From high school I was interested in a career as a darkroom technician but it wasn’t until I went to college that I realised photography is probably a bit of fun too!” View Profile |
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Malcolm MaidenAssociate editor (business)*It’s like the song says: You don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone. And so it was fitting that a singer showed Malcolm Maiden the way back to his true calling as a business journalist, after testing the waters as a music writer. Well, it wasn’t the singer exactly, more his record company. In 1974, after a couple of years as a business writer, Maiden jumped from The Australian Financial Review to become associate editor of the early Australian editions of Rolling Stone. It was the height of the glam-rock era – platform shoes were high, sequins were cool and Gary Glitter was king – and British pop singer Alvin Stardust had just got lucky with his hit My Coo Ca Choo. So Stardust was in Australia on a promotional tour, and Maiden was sent out to interview him. View Profile |
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Michael LeunigCartoonistMichael Leunig never set out to be a cartoonist. He had ideas of becoming a documentary filmmaker. Leunig is one of Australia’s most celebrated cartoonists and has worked at The Age for 25 years. His drawings can be found everywhere – in The Age, in galleries, books, greeting cards, calendars, and even on mugs. Reflecting on his work, Leunig says: “I think that everything that you are conscious of goes into a cartoon somewhere. It floats around so there’s a compost heap inside your own head of all the things in your life – the vegies growing, what the children are talking about – and it all comes together. It comes from many diverse and improbable sources and one digests it, like a very strange diet of influences.” View Profile |
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Justin McManusPhotographerJustin McManus took his first pictures on a small kodak he brought on a footy trip when he was 15 — but it was many years before cameras truly captured his interest. McManus grew up in Kalangadoo, a small region in South Australia in the heart of red gum country. It was footy, not photography, that occupied his time as a teenager. With no darkroom or photography classes offered by his school, McManus had no inkling of his future. It wasn’t until he worked as a wool classer and occasional sheep shearer in many shearing sheds throughout Australia that McManus found his calling for photography. View Profile |
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Royce MillarCity editor*Fear grips city powerbrokers and spinners when they pick up the phone and hear Royce Millar’s voice. They readily admit it. When a State Government minister recently met The Age’s city editor, their conversation was preceded with a neat summary: “Here’s the man who knows everything before we do”. View Profile |
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Carol NaderHealth editor*Carol Nader sometimes wonders whether she was right to choose facts over fiction. As she neared the end of her journalism degree, she applied for a scholarship to study scriptwriting at the Australian Film, Television and Radio School. She was one of six finalists but withdrew her application after The Age offered her a traineeship. “I’ll always wonder if I would have got the scholarship had I not withdrawn my application and whether I would now be working in television or film,” she says. “But I love journalism and I’m confident that I made the right decision.” View Profile |
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Simon O’DwyerPhotographerSimon O’Dwyer has been with The Age for eight years covering news and features. His style of photography is very emotive and not typical of newspaper photography. It is subtle, immediate and powerful and connected to the human condition. View Profile |
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Bruce PettyCartoonistBruce Petty’s long, sweeping lines accompanied with intelligent, sharp wit have made him one of Australia’s most celebrated and influential cartoonists. Petty says the challenge of being a political cartoonist today is more difficult in the era of globalisation. Bruce Petty’s long, sweeping lines accompanied with intelligent, sharp wit have made him one of Australia’s most celebrated and influential cartoonists. As Age journalist Martin Flanagan once wrote: “Petty was revolutionary. He re-invented the world as a vast scribbly machine with interlocking cogs and levers that connected people in wholly logical but unlikely ways.” View Profile |
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Andrew RuleSenior reporter*Andrew Rule’s story on ATSIC chairman Geoff Clark was one of the most significant in The Age’s history, sparking widespread public debate. Winner of the Gold Walkley, Australian Journalist of the Year and other awards, Rule has written on a range of stories including the death of Jennifer Tanner and the Port Arthur massacre. View Profile |
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Simon SchluterPhotographerSimon Schluter takes photographs for the news section and TheCulture. One of his favourite photographs was taken at the Melbourne Fashion Festival before a show at the Regent Theatre. The image encapsulates his whole experience of the week. “I was trying to capture the backstage atmosphere. The light wasn’t great and using the flash would destroy the mood, so a slower shutter speed allowed some movement in the picture and I got lucky with the composition.” View Profile |
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Pat ScalaPhotographerPhotographer Pat Scala has spent a majority of his career on sport, with stints in news and features. Now he is “chasing pollies” in the Canberra bureau. One of the more memorable photographs Scala has taken is of cricketer Justin Langer, which won a Melbourne Press Club Quill award for best sports photograph. View Profile |
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Michael ShmithSenior writerMichael Shmith feigns horror at the idea of being interviewed about his life, but the many wonderful snippets he has penned, and the eloquence being picked up by the recorder, hint that he is more at home than he would like you to believe. “I think I’ve ransacked my brain for almost every purpose on the planet except, perhaps, my tax return,” he quips, eyes twinkling with memories of a childhood spent in 1950s Melbourne. Although he never lived there, the journalist describes himself as a “Collins Street kid”. View Profile |
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Craig SillitoePhotographerFor Age photographer Craig Sillitoe, photography was one of numerous hobbies he had as a teenager. “The beauty of photography as a hobby was that it allowed me to explore all of my other hobbies at the same time. It allowed me to photograph sport and personalities. It was a way of doing all of the things that I liked." View Profile |
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John SilvesterSenior writer – law and justiceJohn Silvester says: “The beauty of crime reporting is there is less hierarchy, the best story of the day might not be done by the senior reporter and that’s what attracts young people to it. It is much more hands on – and that’s one of the reasons why I still really enjoy it.” While this has changed little in the past last 20 years, there have been vast changes in the relationship between journalists and the police force. View Profile |
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Jason SouthPhotographerJason South says: "I like to make my pictures startling, simple and striking without the reader having to look too hard to understand them. I think that's how I see the world." Jason has won many accolades for his work but the most rewarding was when he was named the 1999 Press Photographer of the Year in the prestigious Nikon-Kodak national photography awards. Jason South grew up in New Zealand, and his first real photographic break in newspapers came from a chance encounter with the journalism class at school which had a field trip to a newspaper. South was not a member of the class but snuck on to the trip. By the time he was discovered his teachers allowed him to tour the newspaper. View Profile |
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John SpoonerCartoonistA journalist once wrote that “a Spooner often has an immediate impact: yet the longer you look the more you see”. To describe him as a cartoonist would be to undervalue his remarkable illustrations using a variety of mediums including oil, water, aquatint, monoprint, etching and penandink. Spooner is a four-time Walkley award winner. A journalist once wrote that “a Spooner often has an immediate impact: yet the longer you look the more you see.” The same can be said of John Spooner the man. To describe him as a cartoonist would be to undervalue his remarkable illustrations using a variety of mediums including oil, water, aquatint, monoprint and etching as well as penandink. View Profile |
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Jason StegerLiterary editorSome afternoons you will find The Age’s literary editor Jason Steger asleep at his desk. Catching up on lost sleep because of all the books on his list of things to read. “He’s the expert of the powernap,” A2 editor Sally Heath says, laughing. “You’ll be shouting and there’s no answer – it’s the middle of the afternoon and he’s got his head down on the desk. But he’s often up reading at five in the morning.” “You can’t interview a writer without having read the particular book that’s come out – and preferably a couple of others, so it takes a lot of time and I’m not a hugely fast reader,” Steger explains. “I tend to read early in the morning, at 5.30. When I try to read at night it’s just more trying after a day at work than it is in the morning.” View Profile |
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Penny StephensPhotographerWhen underworld figure Mario Condello was murdered at his Brighton home, Age photographer Penny Stephens was crouched in front of Eddie McGuire at the Allan Border Medal ceremony. After covering the red carpet, sports identities and celebrities, the media heard the big award would be presented in five minutes. View Profile |
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Ron TandbergCartoonistRon Tandberg’s cartoons have been appearing almost daily in Australia since the 1960s. “I’m lucky, I’m totally suited to the job of being a daily news cartoonist. I’ve got a creative nervous energy in me and I’m always questioning things. Although Tandberg doesn’t like to categorise his work into award and non-award winning, it is his 1997 Gold Walkley-winning cartoon, that is one of his favourites. Ron Tandberg has always had the influence of art in his life – and he’s always been an independent thinker. A good example is when he won an art prize where the judges were looking for originality. View Profile |
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Wayne TaylorPhotographerLike many Age photographers, Wayne Taylor became interested in the craft at high school, as part of a media studies course, but he never thought he would become a working photographer. He fell under the spell of the medium when taking images in black and white, processing the film and producing photos on an enlarger. View Profile |
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Mary-Anne ToyBeijing correspondent*After nearly 20 years in journalism, and a career that has taken her to all parts of the world, Mary-Anne Toy still can’t remember deciding that working at a newspaper was what she wanted to do. Perhaps, she says, she knew at age 14, when she wrote to her local paper in Launceston and asked for a cadetship. “They sent me back a very nice letter, thanking me for my interest but saying that it might be nice to finish high school first,” she says. In the end, after a five year arts/law course at Monash University – moving to Melbourne “as soon as I got my driver’s license” – Toy literally dropped in on the profession, working part-time as a Leader Newspapers sub-editor during the final days of her degree and, when the studying was done, arriving on the doorstep of the just established Business Daily to ask for a bit of casual work. View Profile |
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Rachel WellsThe Sunday Age fashion editorShe’s highly regarded as one of Australia’s top fashion reporters. But, as a young girl growing up in the small town of Cobram on the Murray River, Rachel Wells was a world away from the glitz and glamour of the fashion industry. Her father was a talented country footballer who won two Murray League “best and fairest” awards, and coached and then captained the local footy team. With her home just a “drop punt” from the local footy oval, and her life revolving around football and netball in the winter and cricket and tennis in the summer, Wells initially envisioned herself as a sports journalist. View Profile |
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Leonie WoodSenior writer*Perhaps surprising to many, Wood entered the realm of business journalism simply because there was a vacancy in the business section at the paper where she began her journalism career. Admittedly she knew little about business and did not entertain the desire to know more. “I didn’t even have a cheque book or a credit card,” she recalls. Since then she has covered some of the biggest business stories, including the collapse of Ansett. When Leonie Wood received confirmation on the morning of Wednesday, February 27, that the Tesna plans to resurrect Ansett had come undone, she gingerly sat down on her back step. While her mobile phone remained pressed against her ear, a tear or two slithered down her face. View Profile |
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John WoudstraPhotographerAge photographer John Woudstra refers to an old cartoon to describe his work maxim: “It shows a reporter out in the field screaming down the telephone line to his editor saying, ‘It’s a howling gale, it’s raining cats and dogs, it’s 40 below and the streets are flooded. It’s not fit for man nor beast.’ And the editor yells back, ‘Great, we’ll send a photographer’.” View Profile |
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Angela WyliePhotographerAge photographer Angela Wylie still has her first camera, given to her when she was eight years old and took photographs of her sisters and the farm they lived on. View Profile |
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Barney ZwartzReligion editorFew journalists can boast a peace award on their CV. Barney Zwartz is one. “I’m up there with Mother Theresa and Nelson Mandela,” he grins. “Then again, Henry Kissinger’s got one, too.” Zwartz’s prize is not a Nobel, but an award given to him by the Australian Intercultural Society, a Muslim interfaith group, in 2004. It recognises in part his fair reporting of religious issues – no small task given current fears about Islamic extremism. “Islam is a huge issue,” Zwartz says. “We have a responsibility to make sure that Muslims are not unfairly demonised. Providing the whole picture requires positive stories as well, stories that show them just as Australians.” View Profile |
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