24 April 2006

Canberra Times snag a heavyweight for editor?

| johnboy
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The following snippet appeared in today’s Crikey Daily email:

The appointment of a new editor for the Canberra Times is not too far away and word is SMH executive editor Tom Burton has accepted the gig. Burton, an executive editor who’s been writing about media matters, is a union heavyweight and married to fellow SMH reporter Anne Davies.

Sounds like the sort of guy the CT needs, anyone know more about him?

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There’s a snippet about Tom Burton in today’s Australian newspaper. Here it is in full:

“THE Sydney Morning Herald editor who was in charge of the paper’s first round of redundancies two years ago has himself taken redundancy in the latest round. Former executive editor Tom Burton has taken the money and walked away from Fairfax after 19 years. Burton, who recently returned to writing and was covering the media round for the Herald, told Diary he wants to get out of “big media” and write a film script and explore business opportunities in the digital world.

Burton joined The Australian Financial Review’s Canberra bureau from the office of former Labor communications minister Michael Duffy, where he was a political adviser. With no training in journalism, Burton said at the time he could neither type nor write. “I probably still can’t,” he said yesterday. Burton’s wife, Anne Davies, will remain on the Herald as its NSW state political editor. Another Herald identity, Lis Sterel, who was former editor Robert Whitehead’s No.2 for many years, also has taken redundancy in the latest round. Sterel was the partner of Peter Smark, who died in 2000 and whose brilliant writing is featured in the Good Weekend issue that celebrates 175 years of the paper.”

Interesting that it does NOT mention the Canberra Times.

He’s got curly hair and Paul Keating once offered to put him on the “high-grade drip” and warned that if he didn’t co-operate, “we will chop you off at the knees and you will get nothing” (he worked in the Press Gallery for the SMH and Fin Review).

A quick check of my Walkley magazines (MEAA -AJA)received so far this year – no article in there by TB…maybe he’s backing off the Union line nowadays.

more likely he’ll know how to keep them in line.

That’s very true. I don’t know how recent that was, though.

And he has also been a political reporter for the Herald. He did some stories from Canberra on the 2005 federal budget.

But my concern is, if he’s a union heavyweight, does that mean he’ll be able to make sure his staff are paid properly and have good conditions?

Yeah, a respected journo in his time. Could be wrong, but hasn’t he been editing the on-line version of the SMH lately?

Mr Burton used to work for the Financial Review, in between stints at the Sydney Morning Herald.

Before that, he worked for Michael Duffy, who was for a while the federal minister for communications in the Hawke government.

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