‘Part of our DNA’: Australian journalism loses one of its finest
JUDITH WHELAN: 1960-2024
Australian newspaper journalism was teetering between heaven and hell when Judith Whelan first walked into the old Fairfax headquarters in Broadway.
It was 1985. The Sydney Morning Herald’s rivers of gold were still running strong. A year away, Labor would give Rupert Murdoch a monopoly over much of the nation’s print media. And the following year, “young” Warwick Fairfax would shoot his family company in the foot.
But that year, the Herald was enjoying a purple patch attracting a new generation of readers through quality reporting, writing and canny recruitments. In the years ahead, as bankruptcy and the internet arrived, redundancies became the preferred business model: Thousands of reporters, sub-editors, editors and photographers were marched out the door. Few remain from those heydays. Many executives of differing talents rose rapidly and then sank without trace.
Judith Whelan was the perfect combination for a journalist and editor: “She was optimistic and cynical at the same time.”
Whelan became the second of three women to edit the Herald. She was appointed in 2016, but for years in other executive roles had been a sort of guardian angel, providing succour for many fellow journalists who had been felled or continued to work under highly stressful circumstances while she remained resolute in her belief that quality journalism would survive. She lived by that tenet at the Herald. And for the past eight years, she gave the ABC the benefit of her leadership and same beliefs.
On Wednesday, Whelan died after a long battle with cancer. She was 63.
In a singularly unique accolade in modern-day media, Herald editor Bevan Shields said she was adored by the newsroom.
“Judith was a wonderful editor, colleague and friend,” he said. “She was at the Herald for more than three decades and remains part of our DNA. We are heartbroken by her death.”
Lisa Davies, the Herald editor between 2017 and 2021, said Whelan was a trailblazer for women in media, who found her greatest satisfaction in spotting talent and helping them achieve great things. “We are all the better for her leadership and love,” she said.
One of five children of David Whelan, an upholsterer, and his wife Betty, Judith grew up in Hurstville, attending Hurstville Public School before winning a place at selective St George Girls High School. There she became a formidable debater, one of the skills that carried through her career, attending national championships and delighting when her team got the better of Sydney Boys High School.
Whelan as editor of Good Weekend in 1994.Credit: Domino Postiglione
Eighteen-year-old Whelan, who was an Anglican, became an active member of the Sydney University Evangelical Union when she started an arts degree in 1979. She embraced campus life, becoming heavily involved in student politics and was the first female to be elected president of The University of Sydney Union. There she rubbed shoulders with future politicians, including coalition ministers Paul Fletcher and Marise Payne, and future Chief Justice of NSW and Lieutenant-Governor of NSW Andrew Bell. These were relationships that she maintained throughout her life.
She graduated with honours in 1983 and completed a Diploma of Education, going on to teach English at Abbotsleigh, the independent Anglican girls school at Wahroonga, for a year before the Herald took her on in the 1985 cadet intake.
David Dale, then editor of the groundbreaking Stay In Touch column, remembers Whelan walking in the door.
“She was unusual in three ways: she admitted being a Christian; she came from a working-class suburb; and she knew about rugby league – nobody else at the Herald at the time was like that.”
Anne Davies, a member of the same cadet intake who remained a close friend for decades, said it was obvious that Whelan had the perfect combination for a journalist and editor: “She was optimistic and cynical at the same time.”
The newspaper had just recruited The Age’s Peter Smark, an exquisite and wily writer, as chief reporter. Whelan’s bright curiosity caught Smark’s attention. She became a “Smarkette”, the office word for smart cadets dispatched to gather facts so Smark could express contempt for the pretentious, the banal and the ridiculous and display his magic way with adjectives.
Smark – like his close friend and Melbourne protege, Robert Haupt – was dismissive of the ideological certainties of the left and the right and deeply suspicious of fashionable theories. And when Haupt was chosen as editor of the relaunched and renamed National Times on Sunday newspaper in August 1986, he took his mentor’s advice and appointed Whelan as a staff reporter. In April 1987, Haupt resigned and was replaced by Valerie Lawson, foundation editor of the Herald’s Saturday magazine, Good Weekend. However circulation remained so sluggish that the newspaper, by then rebranded as The Times on Sunday, closed in March 1988 and Whelan was recruited to work for Nick Greiner as he was poised to become premier of NSW.
Once in Macquarie Street she perfected the networking skills that had been honed at university and in the office politics of the Herald. One relationship she forged that was of lasting benefit was Mark Scott: he worked for two Greiner education ministers, joined the Herald as education editor and eventually served as Fairfax’s editorial director, before becoming the managing director of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. He is now the vice-chancellor of the University of Sydney.
Greiner resigned in 1992 after a corruption inquiry went against him and Whelan returned to the Herald. She had been going out with a staff journalist, Christopher Henning. They had known each other for years but their relationship deepened when she served as New Zealand correspondent and they married at Balmain’s Saint Mary’s Anglican Church in April 1993.
The birth of their son, Patrick in 1995 coincided with Whelan, as transport reporter, leading the coverage of the controversial opening of Sydney Airport’s third runway. Their daughter, Sophia, arrived in 1997 after Henning was posted to London as the Herald’s European correspondent. Visa constraints limited Whelan’s journalism in Britain but she did write the Herald’s obituary of Princess Diana in 1997 in just three hours when the newspaper found nothing had been prepared.
The couple returned to Sydney in 1998 when Whelan distinguished herself as the nation’s best medical reporter. Two years later she was appointed assistant editor of features, and in April 2004 was chosen to edit Good Weekend, a position she held until 2011 when she became Saturday editor of the newspaper. From there she became news director in 2013 and was formally appointed editor in 2016.
A staff photograph of Whelan as a reporter in 1999. Credit:
She began a new chapter of her career at the ABC in that same year, first as head of spoken content, overseeing RN, Grandstand and capital city radio stations. Two years later, she was the head of specialist content before being appointed director of regional and local content, managing capital city radio stations, rural and regional teams in 48 locations around Australia, regional and local screen content including Gardening Australia, Backroads and Landline and sport, live events and emergency broadcasting. She was then appointed editorial director of the ABC in February 2023, continuing to report directly to managing director David Anderson as she battled illness.
Unlike many editors who work up the pointy end of newspapers where law and order and politics vie for space, Whelan had an unusual taste and liking for sport. She would speak with colleagues at the Herald for hours about the Sydney Swans, the Wallabies or St George. She was tickled pink to think she was running ABC Grandstand and took her oncologist Fran Boyle to visit the commentary box to meet the “voice of cricket” Jim Maxwell and Ian Chappell. During the AFL season they went to watch the Swans from the members’ stand.
Many of those who offered online condolences mentioned Whelan’s kindness. But she did become occasionally frustrated with the parade of executives imposed on the Herald. The most overt sign of her frustration was her rare habit of breaking pens or pencils in two.
Whelan had been sick for years and while she stayed working at the ABC, she kept in contact with her many friends, regularly posting what was on the dinner menu at the Whelan\Henning home on Instagram. Her last post was on June 18 when the family had zucchini flowers, creamy white beans with garlic, chicken stock, and a sharp salad of tomato and red onions. “I could have used more herbs from the garden, but we were too hungry,” she wrote.
Whelan died at the Royal Prince Alfred Hospital on Wednesday surrounded by her family. She is survived by her husband Christopher Henning, son Patrick and daughter Sophia and stepson Sam Henning.
Damien Murphy