The Age

For other uses, see Age (disambiguation).

The Age

File:The Age logo.svg
File:Age front page 12-12-2005.jpg The front page of The Age on 25 July 2007
Type	Daily newspaper
Format	Broadsheet
Owner(s)	Fairfax Media
Editor	Paul Ramadge
Founded	1854
Headquarters	Melbourne, Australia
ISSN	0312-6307
Website	theage.com.au

The Age is a broadsheet daily newspaper, which has been published in Melbourne, Australia since 1854. It is owned and published by Fairfax Media. The Age primarily serves Victoria, but is also available for purchase in Tasmania, the Australian Capital Territory and border regions of South Australia and southern New South Wales. The newspaper shares some content with other Fairfax Media paid daily newspapers such as the Sydney Morning Herald.

The Age currently has an average weekday circulation of 190,600, increasing to 275,000 on Saturdays (in a city of 4 million). The Sunday Age has a circulation of 225,400.

The paper currently has a Monday to Friday readership average of 668,000, reaching an average of 857,000 on Saturdays. The Sunday Age attracts an average of 695,000 readers.

Products

Along with the daily newspaper, The Age publishes a range of magazines, liftouts, programme guides, and posters. The Age's stable of publications includes: the(melbourne)magazine, a glossy lifestyle magazine which is published on the last Friday of the month; Good Weekend; Sunday Life; and special annual magazines such as Footy, Ski, and The Field - which coincides with Melbourne's Spring Racing Carnival.

The Age Good Food Guide

The Age Good Food Guide is the most discerning and up-to-date restaurant guide on the market, and features hundreds of reviews of Victoria's culinary fare. A new edition of the book is launched each year in late August, with the annual Age Good Food Guide Awards. The Age Good Food Guide is available in paperback, iPhone, Blackberry app, and online at The Age Good Food Guide website. ore than 600 reviews, and each copy comes with a unique code that gives you exclusive access to The Age Good Food Guide website.

History

A copy of the first edition of The Age

The Age was launched during the turmoil of Victoria's gold rush era, when the fledgling colony was populated by miners seeking their fortunes. There was unrest among the diggers who were calling for the abolition of the gold licence and the Eureka Stockade rebellion was brewing.

The first owners of The Age were brothers John and Henry Cooke, who ran a merchant company, Francis Cooke and Co. They supported the miners' movement and announced that their new publication would advocate "the removal of all restrictions upon freedom of commerce, freedom of religion and … freedom of personal action". The Cooke brothers launched their paper on October 17, 1854. The first issues sold for sixpence and were filled with news of the latest gold rush and shipping arrivals.

Little more than three months after it was first published The Age faced closure. Its radical views had not attracted support from the powerful and wealthy and its owners faced rising losses. On December 26, 1854 the paper's closure was announced on the front page. But four days later a reprieve was declared and employees took the paper over as a "co-partnery". Each member contributed 25 pounds in capital and agreed to sacrifice a percentage of their wage to keep the paper in production. However within another 18 months the paper became insolvent and they were forced to sell.

Co-partnery member and ex-Argus journalist, Ebenezer Syme, bought the paper for 2000 pounds on June 6, 1856, supported by local citizens including hardware retailer James McEwan. His brother, David Syme, became a partner on September 27, 1856. Under the ownership of 30-year-old Scottish-born Ebenezer, The Age supported every radical movement of the time - the eight-hour working day, reform of the land laws and more. Ebenezer was elected to Parliament, but ill health and stress caused his early death at the age of 34. His brother David took over the paper.

In 1879, aged 52, David Syme took Ebenezer's son Joseph Cowen Syme, 27, into partnership and published The Age under the banner David Syme and Co. Twelve years later, the partnership was dissolved, but the name David Syme and Co remained. When David Syme died in 1908, ownership of the paper was passed to his sons.

In 1948, David Syme and Co became a public company to bring in funds needed for new equipment, but it remained in the control of the family. And in 1964, David Syme's 26-year-old great grandson Ranald Macdonald was appointed managing director. He instigated many changes, including Sunday and evening papers.

Two years later, the trustees of the estate of David Syme entered into a partnership with John Fairfax and Sons Ltd. In June 1972, Fairfax had increased its shareholding to more than 50% of the company, maintaining the partnership agreement of 1966. But the next year Fairfax announced a takeover bid, gaining control of more than 83% of the company's shares.

During the 1970s, The Age introduced many new initiatives, including the Business and Epicure sections. In the 1980s it introduced the EG (Entertainment Guide). The Sunday Age was launched in August 1989.

In 1987, following the death of his father, Sir Warwick Fairfax, Warwick Fairfax took over control of John Fairfax Ltd. But on December 10, 1990 the company collapsed and a receiver was appointed. This was a turbulent period in the modern history of The Age and sparked much debate about media ownership. In February 1991, more than 200 Age journalists went on strike for 24 hours, calling for a charter of editorial independence. In December 1991, the Tourang consortium headed by Canadian media owner Conrad Black and US merchant bank Hellman and Friedman Partners, purchased the John Fairfax Group. Tourang was later renamed John Fairfax Holdings.

In March 1992, a $208 million public share issue was announced and on May 8 that year John Fairfax Holdings was floated on the stock exchange.

In January 1995, The Age became the first Australian newspaper to publish on the internet. Initially it covered just ten stories a day, but today the majority of what is printed in the newspaper goes online and stories are updated as they break.

The Age changed its company name to The Age Company Ltd in December 1999, but in recognition of David Syme's contribution to the newspaper, the David Syme and Co Limited name was retained as a registered trademark.

The Syme family

In June 1856 the Cookes sold the paper to Ebenezer Syme, a Scottish-born businessman, and James McEwan, an ironmonger and founder of McEwans & Co, for 2,000 pounds at auction. The first edition under the new owners was on 17 June 1856. From its foundation the paper was self-consciously liberal in its politics: "aiming at a wide extension of the rights of free citizenship and a full development of representative institutions," and supporting "the removal of all restrictions upon freedom of commerce, freedom of religion and - to the utmost extent that is compatible with public morality - upon freedom of personal action."

Ebenezer Syme was elected to the Victorian Legislative Assembly shortly after buying The Age, and his brother David Syme soon came to dominate the paper, editorially and managerially. When Ebenezer died in 1860, David became editor-in-chief, a position he retained until his death in 1908, although a succession of editors did the day-to-day editorial work. In 1891 Syme bought out Ebenezer's heirs and McEwan's and became sole proprietor. He built up The Age into Victoria's leading newspaper. In circulation it soon overtook its rivals The Herald and The Argus, and by 1890 it was selling 100,000 copies a day, making it one of the world's most successful newspapers.

Under Syme's control The Age exercised enormous political power in Victoria. It supported liberal politicians such as Graham Berry, George Higinbotham and George Turner, and other leading liberals such as Alfred Deakin and Charles Pearson furthered their careers as Age journalists. Syme was originally a free trader, but converted to protectionism through his belief that Victoria needed to develop its manufacturing industries behind tariff barriers. In the 1890s The Age was a leading supporter of Australian federation and of the White Australia policy.

After Syme's death the paper remained in the hands of his three sons, with his eldest son Herbert Syme becoming general manager until his death in 1939. Syme's will prevented the sale of any equity in the paper during his sons' lifetimes, an arrangement designed to protect family control but which had the effect of starving the paper of investment capital for 40 years. Under the management of Sir Geoffrey Syme (1908–42), and his chosen editors Gottlieb Schuler and Harold Campbell, The Age failed to modernise, and gradually lost market share to The Argus and to the tabloid The Sun News-Pictorial, although its classfied advertisement sections kept the paper profitable. By the 1940s the paper's circulation was smaller than it had been in 1900, and its political influence also declined. Although it remained more liberal than the extremely conservative Argus, it lost much of its distinct political identity.

The historian Sybil Nolan writes: "Accounts of The Age in these years generally suggest that the paper was second-rate, outdated in both its outlook and appearance. Walker described a newspaper which had fallen asleep in the embrace of the Liberal Party; "querulous," "doddery" and "turgid" are some of the epithets applied by other journalists. It is inevitably criticised not only for its increasing conservatism, but for its failure to keep pace with innovations in layout and editorial technique so dramatically demonstrated in papers like The Sun News-Pictorial and The Herald."

In 1942 David Syme's last surviving son, Oswald Syme, took over the paper. He modernised the paper's appearance and standards of news coverage (removing classified advertisements from the front page and introducing photographs, long after other papers had done so). In 1948, convinced the paper needed outside capital, he persuaded the courts to overturn his father's will and floated David Syme and Co. as a public company, selling 400,000 pounds worth of shares, enabling a badly needed technical modernisation of the newspaper's production. A takeover attempt by the Fairfax family, publishers of the Sydney Morning Herald (SMH), was beaten off. This new lease on life allowed The Age to recover commercially, and in 1957 it received a great boost when The Argus ceased publication.

The Age Print Centre

The Age was published from its office in Collins Street until 1969, when the newspaper moved to 250 Spencer street. In 2003, The Age Print Centre was opened at Tullamarine.

The Age Print Centre is one of the most modern, technologically advanced printing plants in Australia. It delivers high-quality printed publications for a wide range of publications for both Fairfax and commercial clients. Among it's stable of daily print publications are The Age, The Australian Financial Review and The Bendigo Advertiser.

The Age Print Centre is dedicated to environmentally responsible and sustainable business practises. The Age Print Centre uses Norske Skog paper, which is one of the world's largest recyclers of newspapers and magazines to produce publication papers. More than half of the raw material that goes into making Norske Skog paper is recovered paper. The balance is a blend of on-site produced pulp (mostly sourced from forest and industry waste) and 4% purchased pulp.

The Age Print Centre is also member of the Publisher's National Environment Bureau (PNEB).

Controversies

In 2004 Gawenda was succeeded as editor by British journalist Andrew Jaspan. Jaspan aroused controversy by initially not appearing to know that The Age was published in Melbourne, sacking Gerard Henderson, a prominent conservative columnist, from the paper and by making remarks critical of Douglas Wood, an Australian who was held hostage and tortured in Iraq. Jaspan accused Wood on ABC radio of being boorish and coarse for speaking harshly about those who kidnapped and tortured him.

The generally left-wing Age is frequently compared with Britain's leftist Guardian newspaper. Henderson is one of many to describe it as "The Guardian on the Yarra".

Following the appointment of Andrew Jaspan as editor, The Age has taken a prominent campaigning role in relation to some issues, for example by launching a campaign to Free David Hicks (a prisoner at Guantanamo Bay) in February 2007 and in relation to global warming.

According to the Guardian newspaper, former Fairfax chief executive Fred Hilmer wrote in his memoirs that "he struggled to cope with a left-leaning editorial culture at papers such as the Sydney Morning Herald (SMH) and The Age, and was surprised that journalists saw themselves as advocates rather than simply reporters." Hilmer said that "Fairfax's default position was to turn left and be agenda-driven... Journalists often conducted campaigns where they persisted in covering stories long after readers had lost interest."

The Age is known for often reporting on corruption in religion. In one controversy, The Age of 19 March 2010 reported that the Vienna Boys Choir “has been caught up in accusations that pedophile priests systematically abused their choristers", even though the complaints were made against teachers and older pupils of the choir, which is a private organisation. Crikey accused The Age of outright "fabrication".

Editors

• T. L. Bright and David Blair 1854–56
• Ebenezer Syme 1856–60

Under David Syme

• George Smith 1860–67
• James Harrison 1867–72
• Arthur Windsor 1872–1900
• Gottlieb Schuler 1900–08

Under Geoffrey Syme

• Gottlieb Schuler 1908–26
• Len Briggs 1926–39
• Harold Campbell 1939–42

Under Oswald Syme

• Harold Campbell 1942–59
• Keith Sinclair 1959–66

Recent

• Graham Perkin 1966–75
• Les Carlyon 1975–76
• Greg Taylor 1976–79
• Michael Davie 1979–81
• Creighton Burns 1981–89
• Mike Smith 1989–92
• Alan Kohler 1992–95
• Bruce Guthrie 1995–97
• Michael Gawenda 1997–2004
• Andrew Jaspan 2004–2008
• Paul Ramadge 2008–present

See also

• Australian Journalism
• List of newspapers in Australia

Further reading

• C. E. Sayers, David Syme, Cheshire 1965
• Don Hauser, The Printers of the Streets and Lanes Of Melbourne (1837–1975) Nondescript Press, Melbourne 2006

External links

• theage.com.au - The Age website
• about.theage.com.au - The Age corporate website
• inside.theage.com.au - The Age information hub
• Half a century of obscurity (Sybil Nolan on the history of The Age)
• Sir Geoffrey Syme "Sir Geoffrey Syme Journalist & Managing Editor of The Age from 1908 until 1942"
• The Newspaper Works