While a tutor in political science at Melbourne University, Mike Richards was editor of the political magazine Dissent for four years (1970-1974). After leaving Melbourne University in the early 1980s, he worked as an adviser to the Victorian government for several years before becoming and associate editor and columnist for the Age. By the late 1990s he had been appointed assistant publisher and deputy CEO. In 1999, Richards completed a PhD thesis on the life of Ronald Ryan, the last man hanged in Australia. It was published in 2003 as the Hanged Man: The Life and Death of Ronald Ryan.