 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.

Killing Fairfax: Pamela Williams in conversation with Richard Aedy

A Storyology 2016 event co-presented with the Walkley Foundation

Investigative and public-service journalism shine a light on the world’s dark corners. In today’s globally connected world, leaked documents and data can be shared and analysed by reporters and citizen journalists anywhere. Major investigations into finance and corruption like the Panama Papers highlight the growing chasm between the world's elite and everyone else, and the role governments have played in creating it.

Speakers: Gerard Ryle, director, International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (US);  Lina Attalah, founder & editor-in-chief, Mada Masr (Egypt); Kate McClymont, investigative journalist with the Sydney Morning Herald: Penny O’Donnell (panel chair), Department of Media and Communications, the University of Sydney .

Lina Attalah was a guest of the Walkley Foundation Australia-Arab International Journalism Speaker Program, supported by the Australian Government through the Council for Australian-Arab Relations (CAAR) of the Department of Foreign Affairs & Trade.

Sydney Ideas 

Storyology 2016: investigative journalism, cross-border crime, corruption, and accountability

The WalkleyTalks podcast hosts some of Australia's brightest and most respected luminaries in engaging, wide-ranging conversations on topics ranging from journalism and politics to sport and culture.

Killing Fairfax: Pamela Williams in conversation with Richard Aedy

WalkleyTalks Podcast

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