Six-time Walkley Award-winner Pamela Williams was awarded the Walkley Book Award in 2013 for Killing Fairfax (Harper Collins) – an expose of the fortunes of Fairfax Media inspired by the huge rounds of redundancies and cuts that arrived at the media company after years of challenges to its newspaper business model.
Judges described Killing Fairfax as a detailed, insightful and powerful explanation of what happened when digital adventurers ambushed the traditional Australian media empires which had built what had been considered impregnable fortresses out of the revenue from newspaper advertising. The fortresses crumbled – and were hastily subjected to desperate reconstruction plans – as the digital interlopers gained strength, income and influence.
As an investigative reporter at The Australian Financial Review, covering politics and the business world, Pamela Williams has won five Walkley Awards since 1994, including the Gold Walkley in 1998 for her coverage of the war on the Australian docks. She has also won the Graham Perkin Journalist of the Year award. She is the author of two best-selling books – the political campaign book, The Victory – on the rise of the Howard Government and the business book, Killing Fairfax, which detailed the collapse of the advertising model which had been the financial backbone of the Fairfax Media Empire.
This fascinating discussion will be hosted by Richard Aedy, host of ABC’s Media Report. Richard began his journalistic career in 1988 in New Zealand and has worked as reporter, producer, executive producer and presenter in three countries, including four years at the BBC in London.
As a journalist, Richard has covered crime, aviation, industrial affairs, science, health, technology, education, economics, epidemiology, indigenous issues, social change and the media. He has made award-winning documentaries in Colombia, East Timor, the United States and the UK. After more than 20 years, he remains interested in everything. Richard is a former Reuters Foundation Fellow at Oxford, former presenter of The Buzz and he presented Life Matters from 2006 to the end of last year. He is a lifelong media junkie.
