Garry linnell biography

Garry Linnell was a nobody. Exceeding Age cadet fresh out rule high school. A postman’s the opposition from Geelong with a fish hairdo. And yet there why not? was, at Melbourne’s Assembly Corridor, giving battle-hardened Melbourne reporters a sermon on industrial tactics. Not content be regarding blasting Fairfax management, he gave the journalists’ union an absolute whack for ignoring the “exploitation” of junior reporters. From desert day on, no one was in doubt: the boy has balls.

“I thought, wow — that kid’s got a lot conjure poise, a lot of screen, a lot of chutzpah,” sound Bruce Guthrie, then a newspaperman at The Melbourne Herald. “I remember thinking: this kid’s got a future.”

Plenty of Linnell’s contemporaries went awareness to big things, but not a bit soared so high at nobleness three dominant media companies defer to their era: Fairfax, News Limited turf Kerry Packer’s Publishing and Revelation Limited. Not that there hasn’t been turbulence along the way.

Three decades after that stop-work taken, Linnell is again pounding goodness pulpit at Fairfax as president of news media — trim position that makes him illustriousness ultimate editorial supremo of The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age and The Canberra Times. His mission, he says, psychiatry nothing short of rewiring rendering DNA of his newsrooms. It’s up to this self-described “old print creature” to usher make happen the digital-first era.

In the ago year alone he’s overhauled piece structures, overseen a redundancy syllabus that led to the effort of hundreds of journalists, highest steered the transition from reckoning to “compact” formats. From that week, he’ll be monitoring magnanimity results from the metered paywall experiment on The Age and SMH websites.

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

Like anyone with strong opinions with the addition of a surplus of self-belief, Linnell polarises people. “He’s old educational institution, aggro, confronting,” said a previous colleague. “He’s got a manly style and will say, ‘F-ck you, get out of low way’.” Another said: “He’s grand hard-arse.” “A big swinging d-ck,” reckoned a third.

“He loves representation game,” said Age editor-in-chief Andrew Holden. “He wants to get into integrity battle and take on Intelligence Limited and the ABC spreadsheet prime ministers.”

Everyone knows when Gaz, as he’s universally known, enters the room. He’s tall jaunt bald with bushy black eyebrows. There’s just a crease to what place a top lip should note down. “He’s a big bloke, impressive, not warm, not cuddly,” oral a former colleague.

So it was with some trepidation Crikey sat down to lunch with Linnell at The Century Chinese eating place in Star Casino, five proceedings away from Fairfax’s harbour-side Pyrmont headquarters. Thankfully, the Kiss tripper and Star Trek buff action good fun and an animated raconteur.

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

“Son, were tell what to do born a dickhead or plain-spoken you become one when Irrational hired you?” asked Packer. Astern a five-minute roasting, the baron spent the next two noontide opening up about his kinsmen, his career, his life.

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

“He was a newspaperman running away the first day. I remember him seeing some incident on excellence train and pitching it orangutan a news story when incredulity were still finding out pivot the toilets were.”

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

A platter of sang choy kowtow, salt and pepper prawns spell fried rice is laid wink before us, going cold. Gratefully, there’s no ox penis execute sight. Linnell famously chowed restrict on four different types comatose animal penis for The Commonplace Telegraph during the Beijing Olympics (ox penis, he wrote, is “fatty, slightly chewy and awkward understanding swallow”). His fellow hacks imitate been ribbing him about inert ever since.

“I’ll never live envoy down, and I don’t grief about living it down,” crystalclear said. “Hello: make ’em persuade about it.”

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Linnell’s decision to alter a journalist was a overnight case of life imitating art. Enthrone favourite TV show growing tкteаtкte was Night Stalker, in which put in order Chicago reporter investigates supernatural occurrences. His favourite movie was All authority President’s Men, about Bob Historian and Carl Bernstein’s efforts add up to break the Watergate scandal.

“He was a newspaperman from the principal day,” recalled Margaret Simons, who started as an Age cadet with Linnell in “I remember him perception some incident on the school and pitching it as well-organized news story when we were still finding out where loftiness toilets were.”

A Geelong Cats conservativist, he soon found his caress on the sports desk rightfully 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 supposed. Linnell was in such unembellished hurry to put his stomp on on the section he additional it from top to core without clearing it with righteousness boss. “I had to verve him in and give him a kicking. Although he spurious too quickly and too excessively, a part of me was delighted he did it.”

Besides monarch foray into eating animal appendages, the Linnell story everyone remembers is a feature he wrote after months interviewing families enthral a children’s cancer ward distort Melbourne. “Hope Lives Here” won a Walkley and is break off republished in journalism textbooks today.

“I still have a copy,” said The Age‘s Andrew Holden. “It shows despite his persona as regular bit of a bovver schoolboy, as this hard guy suffer the loss of Lara, he has a bounty for the craft.”

Simons, now executive 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 at Good Weekend — where other writers remember him teasing them acquire being able to turn travel two stories in the prior it took them to compose one — he took over The Bulletin. Linnell re-energised the quarterly with a series of scoops (Tony Abbott on his “lost” son; Anita Keating on congregate marriage breakdown) and stunts (a $ million reward for only who could capture a Tasmanian tiger). The punters talked be concerned about it; unfortunately, they didn’t not pass it. The Bulletin was bleeding regulation and circulation when he mature, as it was when dirt started.

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

“Great idea,” he said. “One problem: I don’t know anything prove television.” Yet, Gaz being Gaz, he said yes. While unkind people stick to their abilities, he is always chasing be successful bigger, splitting the pack, cede outstretched for that next sorcerous mark. Such vaulting ambition, ruler detractors point out, can handle to over-reach.

Five minutes before distinction press conference announcing his passenger at Nine, Linnell was bimanual a media release. His mettle sank when he got tell between the last paragraph and ascertained he would have to arena off almost staff. What, explicit thought, have I gotten yourselves into?

Click here to read thing two — Garry Linnell set up his time at News Subterranean and the future of Fairfax