The Fin Review has appointed Glenn Burge as its new editor despite the fact he’s never worked overseas or even in Canberra. But our list tracking the overseas experience of Aussie editors shows that Burge is not the first. Afterall, former Sunday Telegraph editor Rocky Miller indulgently quoted John Howard and Bob Carr saying he was an absolute legend and Rocky was never a foreign correspondent.

“The fear and loathing – the wailing and gnashing of teeth – within the AFR, is something to behold now that Glenn Burge has been anointed as editor. Suggest you touch base with some of your old colleagues to get your own impression on the gloom that has descended.

Anon”

Burge is a machiavellian little fellow and highly ambitious. He’s good on the Sydney corporate scene but it remains to be seen how he handles the job of being editor of a paper that also covers politics and international affairs.

Afterall, there are not many editors in Australia who have not had a foreign posting or at least worked in Canberra but Burge is one of them. He’ll be up against The Australian’s Michael Stutchbury who has worked out of Canberra and Washington.

The Sydney Morning Herald had the best business section in Australia for many years and Burge was a key part of this although his divisive style put a lot of people such as Alan Deans, Mark Westfield and Ian Verrender off side.

Col Allan used to say that Sunday Telegraph editor Roy Miller was lesser for the fact that he’d never worked overseas and former Telegraph editor Steve Howard is another who never did the overseas stint.

We’ve started a new list tracking the overseas experience of editors but before we look at that, this piece that Roy Miller approved for himself in 1999 would suggest you don’t need foreign experience to be a good editor.

This would have to be the most self-indulgent piece ever published by an editor about himself and Roy clearly fails to keep a respectable distance from politicians.

The last thing an editor wants is praise from a politician but Carr and Howard are just heaping it on Rocky which means he obviously allowed them to get away with all sorts of things over the years.

THE SUNDAY TELEGRAPH, FEBRUARY 14, 1999, PAGE TWO

THE editor of The Sunday Telegraph, Roy Miller, has been promoted to the post of managing director of The Gold Coast Bulletin newspaper.

The elevation means he moves from Australia’s biggest-selling newspaper after being one of the most respected and successful editors of his generation.

Mr Miller, 53, has held the post of editor for a record eight years, during which time The Sunday Telegraph became Australia’s biggest circulating newspaper.

Under his editorial guidance, promotional and managerial stewardship, it achieved a record sale in the last audit of 719,423 copies a week with almost two million readers.

The paper was selling just 596,000 copies a week when Mr Miller joined in October, 1990.

The chairman and chief executive of News Limited, Lachlan Murdoch, said Mr Miller would bring a new focus to the Gold Coast publication.

“Roy Miller is an outstanding editor who will bring his broad-based experience in driving a successful newspaper to his new role in senior management in Queensland,” he said.

Congratulations on Mr Miller’s new role yesterday reflected the respect he has earned both within the company and the wider community.

Prime Minister John Howard was the first to offer his congratulations on a great career.

“Rocky Miller has been a great editor,” Mr Howard said.

“He has lifted the circulation and dramatically increased the influence of The Sunday Telegraph.

“Few people in newspapers I have known have been more in touch with mainstream Australia.

“I wish him well at The Gold Coast Bulletin.”

NSW Premier Bob Carr said Mr Miller had served the paper and his readers with dedication.

“Roy Miller is a touchstone of public opinion,” Mr Carr said. “I have found he has an uncanny knack of knowing what the people are thinking and saying.”

“Like the NSW public, Roy is a bastion of commonsense. I used him as a guide to what public reaction might be to many political issues.

“I commend him on his achievement with The Sunday Telegraph and I wish him well in his new challenge.”

Over the years “Rocky” has become a legendary figure within News Limited, being one of its top editors since the mid 1980s. He joined the company in 1960 as a copy boy. He was formerly editor of the afternoon paper, The Daily Mirror, a post he held for five years.

Mr Miller replaces one of the company’s most senior managers, Ian Jeffers, who will retire next month after 33 years with the company.

The Sunday Telegraph is today pleased to welcome its new editor, Jeni Cooper. Ms Cooper, 36, has been the paper’s deputy editor since 1998 after joining as assistant editor in 1997.

She is a Walkley Award winning journalist who joined News Ltd in 1986 as a reporter in The Australia’s Adelaide Bureau.

From 1987 to 1991 she worked as a senior political reporter in both Sydney and Canberra, and in 1997 became managing editor of The Australian.

ends

Overseas experience of our editors

Piers Akerman: edited the Adelaide Advertiser and Melbourne Herald Sun in the late 80s and early 90s and did a stint in New York in the early 80s.

John Alexander: The former editor in chief of both the SMH and the Fin Review rose up through ranks as a business journalist and was Glenn Burge’s mentor who also didn’t ever work as a foreign correspondent.

Col Allan: the legendary Daily Telegraph editor is now back in New York editing the New York Post after spending a couple of years there in the early 80s. He also did a stint in London.

David Armstrong: edited the South China Morning Post in the-mid 1990s for Rupert and later for Robert Kwok.

Bruce Baskett: Edited the Herald and Herald Sun in the early 90s and was the New York correspondent in the mid to late 80s for the old Herald & Weekly Times.

Peter Blunden: joined News straight from school and is the longest serving continuous editor but don’t think he ever had a foreign posting although I’ll stand corrected.

Frank Devine: was sent all over the world editing papers for Rupert including The Australian and The New York Post.

Colin Duck: former editor of The Melbourne Sun who ran the HWT European bureau for a while.

Alan Farrally: the former editor of The Australian spent a period as editor of the South China Morning Post for Rupert in Hong Kong.

Bruce Guthrie: former editor of The Age and current editor of Who Weekly who worked in the News Ltd LA bureau in the 80s.

Greg Hywood: Current publisher of The Age and former editor in chief of both the SMH and the Fin Review who spent many years in Washington for the Fin Review.

Paul Kelly: don’t think The Australian’s former editor ever worked overseas but he travels extensively as International Affairs editor.

Alan Kohler: has edited the Fin Review and The Age but I’m not aware of any foreign posting.

Deborah Light: did a good job as editor of the AFR without any overseas experience but at least she’d worked in Canberra, unlike Burge.

Mel Mansell: the Adelaide Advertiser editor has never been a foreign correspondent as such but he came from New Zealand and worked on the sports desk of the London Daily Telegraph before joining the Sydney Daily Telegraph in the late 1980s.

Paul McGeogh: came from Ireland initially and refused to take up Australian citizenship until we became a Republic. After a three year stint as editor of the SMH he’s now back based in New York and has been filing from Afghanistan.

Phil McLean: The Sun Herald editor was News Ltd’s New York correspondent in the early 1990s.

Roy Miller: edited the Sunday Telegraph for most of the 1990s without ever having been a foreign correspondent.

Alan Oakley: Don’t think the current editor of the Newcastle Herald has ever been a foreign correspondent but he’s actually a pom who came to Australia in the late 80s and rose to become editor of the Melbourne Herald Sun.

Campbell Reid: Current editor of The Daily Telegraph and former editor of The Australian who worked in the New York bureau for News Ltd.

Colleen Ryan: outgoing editor of The Fin Review who came back from Washington to take the job.

Michael Stutchbury: editor of The Australian who was Washington correspondent for the Fin Review.

I need to check on the following if anyone can help out: Michael Davey, Les Carlyon, Steve Harris, Chris Mitchell, Paul Murray, Neil Mitchell.

ends

And he’s never been a sub either

Dear Stephen,

Your piece, motivated by the rise and rise of Glenn Burge at the AFR, concerning whether overseas experience matters for an editor is only part of the story. As important, surely, might be experience in that oft-overlooked but still quite crucial area of putting out newspapers: sub-editing. It’s well known that morale among the subbing troops at the Fin, once considered by many to be the plum subbing gig in the nation (a function of the small production window), has fallen even further than among reporters, who have quite enough grievances about mean and tricky management. Part of the subs’ grievances stem from the pretty obvious lack of regard that the powers that be have for what they do – a lack of regard rooted in the fact there are few senior editors at the Fin who have ever done a stint on the subs desk and therefore don’t appreciate that subbing takes some degree of skill and intelligence and subs aren’t all brain- dead washed-up ex-journos. When I worked there I remember having to tutor one new section editor – someone many grades higher than me – in how to work out how much room a story would take on a page (like, what a column centimetre is). Colleen Ryan’s disdain for subs was pretty evident, so much so that at one point, to make sure subs were doing long enough hours, they were being kept in after the edition had left the stone, as if they were errant school children. The last senior editor who the subs had great regard for was Malcolm Schmidtke, and he was sidelined by the Ryan-Burge cartel.

Even Lachlan Murdoch did, I believe, about six months on the subs desk before his meteoric rise through the ranks. Shouldn’t editors at least have the same experience under their belt. Seems to me that would make more different than whether they’ve filed a story from overseas.

anon

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