Ben Hills Ben Hills i(A12605 works by)
Born: Established: 1942
c
United Kingdom (UK),
c
Western Europe, Europe,
;
Gender: Male
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BiographyHistory

Ben Hills has worked as a journalist for The Age.

Hills is also the author of a biography about former Age editor Graham Perkin, which recounts the history of the newspaper and its relation to the Syme dynasty that controlled it from the 1850s until 1983, when Ranald Macdonald, the fourth and last of the Symes to run The Age, retired.

Most Referenced Works

Personal Awards

2014 shortlisted Ashurst Business Literature Prize for Stop the Presses: How Greed, Incompetence (and the Internet) Wrecked Fairfax

Awards for Works

y separately published work icon Breaking News : The Golden Age of Graham Perkin Carlton North : Scribe , 2010 Z1688357 2010 single work biography

'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.' (From the publisher's website.)

2010 shortlisted Western Australian Premier's Book Awards Non-Fiction
2010 co-winner 'The Nib': CAL Waverley Library Award for Literature Mark and Evette Moran Nib Award for Literature The Alex Buzo Shortlist Prize
2010 shortlisted Mark and Evette Moran Nib Award for Literature
2010 longlisted Walkley Award Best Non-Fiction Book
Last amended 13 Feb 2015 12:11:03
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