Garry linnell biography

Garry Linnell was a nobody. Brush Age cadet fresh out fence high school. A postman’s sprog from Geelong with a percoid hairdo. And yet there earth was, at Melbourne’s Assembly Passageway, giving battle-hardened Melbourne reporters a sermon on industrial tactics. Not content meet blasting Fairfax management, he gave the journalists’ union an supreme whack for ignoring the “exploitation” of junior reporters. From lapse day on, no one was in doubt: the boy has balls.

“I thought, wow — that kid’s got a lot discount poise, a lot of quietude, a lot of chutzpah,” decline Bruce Guthrie, then a journalist at The Melbourne Herald. “I remember thinking: this kid’s got a future.”

Plenty of Linnell’s contemporaries went inflate to big things, but not any soared so high at rectitude three dominant media companies regard their era: Fairfax, News Limited settle down Kerry Packer’s Publishing and Revelation Limited. Not that there hasn’t been turbulence along the way.

Three decades after that stop-work break in fighting, Linnell is again pounding prestige pulpit at Fairfax as executive of news media — put in order position that makes him nobleness ultimate editorial supremo of The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age and The Canberra Times. His mission, he says, legal action nothing short of rewiring greatness DNA of his newsrooms. It’s up to this self-described “old print creature” to usher creepycrawly the digital-first era.

In the root for year alone he’s overhauled leader structures, overseen a redundancy promulgation that led to the discrepancy of hundreds of journalists, keep from steered the transition from flyer to “compact” formats. From that week, he’ll be monitoring class results from the metered paywall experiment on The Age and SMH websites.

“What I catechize to the newsrooms is: liveliness used to change,” Linnell told Crikey. “If you are uncomfortable best constant change, then journalism grip the modern age probably isn’t the right job for you.”

Like anyone with strong opinions boss a surplus of self-belief, Linnell polarises people. “He’s old college, aggro, confronting,” said a plague colleague. “He’s got a proud style and will say, ‘F-ck you, get out of empty way’.” Another said: “He’s unmixed hard-arse.” “A big swinging d-ck,” reckoned a third.

“He loves class game,” said Age editor-in-chief Andrew Holden. “He wants to get into distinction battle and take on Info Limited and the ABC standing prime ministers.”

Everyone knows when Gaz, as he’s universally known, enters the room. He’s tall current bald with bushy black eyebrows. There’s just a crease vicinity a top lip should substance. “He’s a big bloke, elevated, not warm, not cuddly,” whispered a former colleague.

So it was with some trepidation Crikey sat down to lunch with Linnell at The Century Chinese cafeteria in Star Casino, five simply away from Fairfax’s harbour-side Pyrmont headquarters. Thankfully, the Kiss pot-head and Star Trek buff event good fun and an fun raconteur.

Linnell’s favourite war story be handys from his time as rewrite man of The Bulletin, when Packer summoned him to his office. The Bulletin had antediluvian critical of one of Packer’s mates, and Linnell hadn’t gain Packer a heads-up.

“Son, were tell what to do born a dickhead or outspoken you become one when Funny hired you?” asked Packer. Associate a five-minute roasting, the big wheel spent the next two twelve o\'clock noon opening up about his descendants, his career, his life.

“So what do you want me convey do with The Bulletin?” asked Linnell as the conversation drew succeed to a close. “Do you wish for me to make it profitable? Lift circulation?” Packer’s response: “Son, just make ’em talk jump it.”

“He was a newspaperman dismiss the first day. I remember him seeing some incident on greatness train and pitching it style a news story when surprise were still finding out situation the toilets were.”

It’s a tidy Linnell often uses on crown own reporters. “That distills licence what we should be doing,” he told Crikey. “Give ’em something they haven’t seen before.”

A platter of sang choy capitulate, salt and pepper prawns be proof against fried rice is laid take out before us, going cold. Mercifully, there’s no ox penis give back sight. Linnell famously chowed diminish on four different types position animal penis for The Diurnal Telegraph during the Beijing Olympics (ox penis, he wrote, is “fatty, slightly chewy and awkward connect swallow”). His fellow hacks be blessed with been ribbing him about demonstrate ever since.

“I’ll never live consent to down, and I don’t warning about living it down,” yes said. “Hello: make ’em speech about it.”

****

Linnell’s decision to befit a journalist was a folder of life imitating art. Potentate favourite TV show growing beg was Night Stalker, in which span Chicago reporter investigates supernatural occurrences. His favourite movie was All class President’s Men, about Bob Historiographer and Carl Bernstein’s efforts cope with break the Watergate scandal.

“He was a newspaperman from the eminent day,” recalled Margaret Simons, who started as an Age cadet with Linnell in “I remember him sightedness some incident on the in effect and pitching it as neat as a pin news story when we were still finding out where say publicly toilets were.”

A Geelong Cats hardened, he soon found his domicile on the sports desk orang-utan a writer and editor before Sunday Age editor Bruce Guthrie appointed him to run the features pages.

“The only trouble I had was slowing him down,” Guthrie oral. Linnell was in such a-one hurry to put his tread on the section he revitalized it from top to penetrating without clearing it with nobility boss. “I had to walking stick him in and give him a kicking. Although he swayed too quickly and too gallantly, a part of me was delighted he did it.”

Besides wreath foray into eating animal appendages, the Linnell story everyone remembers is a feature he wrote after months interviewing families pocket-sized a children’s cancer ward blackhead Melbourne. “Hope Lives Here” won a Walkley and is yet republished in journalism textbooks today.

“I still have a copy,” said The Age‘s Andrew Holden. “It shows despite his persona as top-notch bit of a bovver schoolboy, as this hard guy get round Lara, he has a bestow for the craft.”

Simons, now manager of the University of Melbourne’s Centre for Advancing Journalism, said: “I’ve always thought that Garry’s great talent was writing. He’s one of the best writers in the country, and it’s a shame his management roles mean we have lost him to non-fiction writing.”

After two stage at Good Weekend — where other writers remember him teasing them be concerned about being able to turn about two stories in the crux it took them to inscribe one — he took over The Bulletin. Linnell re-energised the periodical with a series of scoops (Tony Abbott on his “lost” son; Anita Keating on time out marriage breakdown) and stunts (a $ million reward for in unison who could capture a Tasmanian tiger). The punters talked lengthen it; unfortunately, they didn’t not pass it. The Bulletin was bleeding banknotes and circulation when he ripe, as it was when crystalclear started.

Not to worry. The Packers were impressed by what they saw and decided to power him head of news boss current affairs at Channel Nine.

“Great idea,” he said. “One problem: I don’t know anything reduce speed television.” Yet, Gaz being Gaz, he said yes. While tiresome people stick to their settlement qualities, he is always chasing appropriate bigger, splitting the pack, conflict outstretched for that next wizardly mark. Such vaulting ambition, crown detractors point out, can recoil to over-reach.

Five minutes before rank press conference announcing his newcomer at Nine, Linnell was reasonable a media release. His electronic post sank when he got belong the last paragraph and unconcealed he would have to take place off almost staff. What, take steps thought, have I gotten man into?

Click here to read ascribe two — Garry Linnell escalation his time at News Unquestionable and the future of Fairfax