What started as a conservative Sydney paper bought for £10,000 in 1841 grew into a media empire sailing on ‘rivers of gold’
When a previously bankrupt Englishman named John Fairfax bought the conservative Sydney
Herald newspaper for £10,000 in 1841 he began a dynastic media empire
that helped to write the first draft of Australian history for 177
years.
In that time everyone from Rupert Murdoch to Kerry Packer to Paul Keating has wanted to kill Fairfax, with varying success. In the end the bullet came in the form of a cold statement from company’s chief executive, Greg Hywood, on a winter morning in July 2018.
“The merged company will be called Nine,” he said. “I would like to thank everyone for their contribution to Fairfax.”
But long before Hywood, before Gina Rinehart and before young Warwick Fairfax’s doomed takeover in the 1980s, the company was a family operation.
The Herald was the dominant publication in the young Sydney colony, and by 1853 the Fairfax family was its sole owner.
Proudly Tory at its inception, Fairfax renamed the paper the Sydney Morning Herald but continued on a conservative bent.
In her 2013 book Fairfax: the Rise and Fall, author Colleen Ryan described John Fairfax as a “political conservative and committed Christian” who helped set the Herald’s “patrician and conservative tone”. The paper described the 1854 Eureka Stockade rebellion of gold miners in Ballarat as “treason”.
John Fairfax died in 1877, but the family’s grip on Australia’s media landscape continued.
When Oxford-educated Sir Warwick Fairfax took over at the age of 28 in 1930 he began a 46-year reign which saw the company publicly listed in 1956. Sir Warwick stood six foot two and had a bookish nature. He was once described by SMH editor JD Pringle as “rather like a sensitive, intelligent, slightly neurotic don”.
During the so-called “rivers of gold” period where the company’s bottom line was bolstered by classified advertising, Sir Warwick oversaw saw the company expand to own the Sun Herald, the Age, the Australian Financial Review and regional publications such as the Newcastle Herald and Illawarra Mercury.
After briefly stepping down as Fairfax chairman in 1961 during his second divorce, Sir Warwick became increasingly an interventionist figure in the SMH newsroom.
During the 1961 election Sir Warwick threw the paper’s support behind Arthur Calwell from the Labor party and against the Menzies government. It was the first time the SMH had endorsed a Labor vote.
A week out from the election Fairfax wrote in the paper’s editorial that “since after 12 years in office, the government can offer no further suggestion except to stand on its record, we would prefer to give Labor its opportunity”.
Sir Warwick reluctantly stepped down as chairman in 1977 and was replaced by his eldest son, James, who served as chairman from 1977 to 1987 when his half-brother “young Warwick” Fairfax launched an ill-fated takeover of the company.
At the age of 26 a highly-leveraged Warwick Fairfax took the company private, but a share market crash by the end of that year meant that by 1991 the company was in receivership.
In Rise and Fall, Ryan wrote that young Warwick’s venture was the first example of Fairfax becoming a “plaything for moguls”, and sparked an unsuccessful attempt by Kerry Packer and Rupert Murdoch to carve up the Australian media landscape between them.
It wasn’t the last time a billionaire set its sights on the company.
In 2010 Australia’s richest person Gina Rinehart began buying shares in Fairfax, acquiring a 1.5% stake in the business. She became the company’s biggest shareholder in February 2012 when she bought a 14% stake and went on to build her holding to 18.7% in June 2012.
She was believed to be planning a takeover of Fairfax before she reduced her stake below 15% and then eventually sold it in 2015.
In that time everyone from Rupert Murdoch to Kerry Packer to Paul Keating has wanted to kill Fairfax, with varying success. In the end the bullet came in the form of a cold statement from company’s chief executive, Greg Hywood, on a winter morning in July 2018.
“The merged company will be called Nine,” he said. “I would like to thank everyone for their contribution to Fairfax.”
But long before Hywood, before Gina Rinehart and before young Warwick Fairfax’s doomed takeover in the 1980s, the company was a family operation.
The Herald was the dominant publication in the young Sydney colony, and by 1853 the Fairfax family was its sole owner.
In her 2013 book Fairfax: the Rise and Fall, author Colleen Ryan described John Fairfax as a “political conservative and committed Christian” who helped set the Herald’s “patrician and conservative tone”. The paper described the 1854 Eureka Stockade rebellion of gold miners in Ballarat as “treason”.
John Fairfax died in 1877, but the family’s grip on Australia’s media landscape continued.
When Oxford-educated Sir Warwick Fairfax took over at the age of 28 in 1930 he began a 46-year reign which saw the company publicly listed in 1956. Sir Warwick stood six foot two and had a bookish nature. He was once described by SMH editor JD Pringle as “rather like a sensitive, intelligent, slightly neurotic don”.
During the so-called “rivers of gold” period where the company’s bottom line was bolstered by classified advertising, Sir Warwick oversaw saw the company expand to own the Sun Herald, the Age, the Australian Financial Review and regional publications such as the Newcastle Herald and Illawarra Mercury.
After briefly stepping down as Fairfax chairman in 1961 during his second divorce, Sir Warwick became increasingly an interventionist figure in the SMH newsroom.
During the 1961 election Sir Warwick threw the paper’s support behind Arthur Calwell from the Labor party and against the Menzies government. It was the first time the SMH had endorsed a Labor vote.
A week out from the election Fairfax wrote in the paper’s editorial that “since after 12 years in office, the government can offer no further suggestion except to stand on its record, we would prefer to give Labor its opportunity”.
Sir Warwick reluctantly stepped down as chairman in 1977 and was replaced by his eldest son, James, who served as chairman from 1977 to 1987 when his half-brother “young Warwick” Fairfax launched an ill-fated takeover of the company.
At the age of 26 a highly-leveraged Warwick Fairfax took the company private, but a share market crash by the end of that year meant that by 1991 the company was in receivership.
In Rise and Fall, Ryan wrote that young Warwick’s venture was the first example of Fairfax becoming a “plaything for moguls”, and sparked an unsuccessful attempt by Kerry Packer and Rupert Murdoch to carve up the Australian media landscape between them.
It wasn’t the last time a billionaire set its sights on the company.
In 2010 Australia’s richest person Gina Rinehart began buying shares in Fairfax, acquiring a 1.5% stake in the business. She became the company’s biggest shareholder in February 2012 when she bought a 14% stake and went on to build her holding to 18.7% in June 2012.
She was believed to be planning a takeover of Fairfax before she reduced her stake below 15% and then eventually sold it in 2015.
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