A Newspaperman In The True Sense Of The Word
The Age
Friday October 12, 2007
JOHN FITZGERALD
JOURNALIST 31-7-1931 - 11-10-2007JOHN Fitzgerald was the kind of newspaperman most newspapermen would like to be. He was bold, decisive, irreverent, funny, and relentless in his pursuit of truth. He loved a good one-liner, and created many of them. And he knew the vibes, the very beat, of Melbourne better than anybody else.He left newspapers physically when he resigned the editorship of The Herald in late 1978 to take up what became a hugely successful career in corporate public relations. But, spiritually, he never went away. Throughout a couple of decades of networking among the highest of flyers, he always retained what was essentially a city-desk approach to life.Fitzgerald was born in Glandore, Adelaide, while his family was briefly in town. His father was a commercial traveller, often short of money, and some of John's early years were widely dispersed. He attended seven different primary schools. He was a student at three high schools - Bendigo, Essendon and (during a two-year stay with relatives in Brisbane) Brisbane Boys High.He spent much of his growing-up time in Bendigo, and - after being knocked back for reporting jobs at the Bendigo Advertiser and the Melbourne Herald - he took up a part-time job as a teacher at North Bendigo State School. Then he landed a cadetship with the Warrnambool Standard.In 1951, after many more applications to The Herald, he received a phone call from that newspaper's chief of staff, Bill Tipping, offering him a job. Not as a reporter . . . but as a personal, clerical assistant to the managing director, Keith (later Sir Keith) Murdoch. Other holders of that pathway post had been Keith Dunstan and Keith Mattingley. Soon afterwards Fitzgerald joined the reporting staff.On leave later from the Herald, he had spells with the AAP bureaus in London and New York. He loved big sport, and had plenty of opportunity to cover it while working with the news agency. In 1954 he covered the Vancouver Commonwealth Games, scene of the Bannister-Landy "mile of the century". It was there he first met Kevan Gosper, later to become a loyal, powerful friend.It was in London in the '50s that my own close friendship with John Fitzgerald began. We worked against each other (he for AAP, I for the Herald and Weekly Times) at the Cardiff 1958 Commonwealth Games and the Rome 1960 Olympic Games. We competed ferociously for stories, but spent most of our non-working time in each other's company. His wife, Arline, stayed with my family during the Rome Games.In 1974, after five years as chief of staff of the paper, Fitzgerald was appointed editor of The Herald. It was as if he was made for the job. He quickly established himself as an instinctive, resourceful leader, and should always be remembered for two very brave decisions.One was to publish, despite denials and under heavy threat of defamation action, evidence that the minister for minerals and energy, Rex Connor, had been dealing with the Iranian bagman Tirath Khemlani. This was the Loans Affair, and Fitzgerald's Herald was setting the national agenda. Connor resigned the day after the evidence was published, and the Whitlam government lost the election that followed.The other judgement, following the murder of Donald Mackay in Griffith, was to publish a series of articles outlining Italian links with Australian drug dealers. In both these major investigations, the reporter was Peter Game.It was during his time at The Herald that Fitzgerald made the disarming observation: "I've been dealing with PR men for 28 years and I still don't know what they do." Years later he was described in The Australian Financial Review as "one of those dyed-in-the-wool, ink-in-the-veins newspapermen who treated the PR world with traditional disdain".Maybe so, but he spent 15 years as managing director of one of the nation's most successful public relations firms - IPR, later Shandwick IPR. He later joined John Bertrand's One Australia organisation, whose mission it was to bring back the America's Cup to Australia. He was also a director of Sports Marketing and Management, working closely with the Australian Olympic Committee.The bigger the challenge, the more he enjoyed it. For his Olympic and community work he was awarded respectively the IOC's Olympic Order in silver and membership of the Order of Australia.Fitzgerald had a wonderful appetite for life, and he continued to enjoy it for most of the two years he had left after he learned that he was suffering from incurable cancer. Soon after that awful news became known, he received one of the great honours of his career. The Melbourne Press Club gave him its Lifetime Achievement Award.On the night of the presentation, attended by his extended family, he gave a vintage Fitzie performance. Accepting the award, he delivered a droll, self-deprecating speech and some rambling jokes that encompassed, among much else, rabbis, funeral directors and the issue of mortality. He was clearly exhausted, but utterly delighted, when he left the rostrum.About 10 days before his death, after a particularly uncomfortable day, Fitzie looked up from his bed at this visitor. His face suddenly lit up, he gave a grin, and said: "Hasn't it been a great ride?" Again, it was trademark Fitzie . . . and he was so right. John Fitzgerald is survived by his wife Arline, to whom he was married 52 years ago in Bendigo, his daughters Louise and Kate, as well as Louise's husband, Murray and their children, Georgie and Phoebe, and Kate's husband, Peter, and their daughter, Matilda.Harry Gordon is a former editor of the Melbourne Sun News-Pictorial and editor-in-chief of The Herald and Weekly Times.
© 2007 The Age