Gideon Haigh

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Gideon Haigh is an English-born Australian journalist. He was born in London, but raised in Geelong, Australia.[1]

Contents

[edit] Career

He began his career as a journalist, writing on business news for The Age newspaper from 1984 to 1992 and for The Australian from 1993 to 1995. He has since contributed to over twenty newspapers and magazines[2], both on business topics as well as on sport, mostly cricket. He wrote regularly for The Guardian during the 2006-07 Ashes series.

Haigh has written or edited over twenty books. Of his cricket books, there are historical works such as The Cricket War and Summer Game, biographies (The Big Ship, Mystery Spinner), collections of his newspaper columns (Ashes 2005), as well as his famous story of his local cricket club, The Vincibles. That his writing was held in high regard was shown by the decision to appoint him editor of the Wisden Cricketers' Almanack Australia for 1999-2000 and 2000-01. He has also published books on business-related topics, such as The Battle for BHP and Asbestos House, the latter describing the James Hardie asbestos controversy.

Since March 2006, Haigh has been a regular panellist on the ABC Television's The Offsiders, a sports panel show. Haigh was also a regular co-host on The Conversation Hour with Jon Faine on 774 ABC Melbourne until near the end of 2006.

Haigh won the John Curtin Prize for Journalism in the Victorian Premier's Literary Awards in 2006[3], for his essay "Information Idol: How Google is making us stupid"[4], which was published in The Monthly magazine. Haigh asserted that the quality of discourse could suffer as a source of information's worth is judged by Google according to its previous degree of exposure to the status quo. The pool of information available to those using Google as their sole avenue of inquiry is thus inevitably limited, and possibly compromised due to covert commercial influences, according to Haigh.

[edit] List of works

[edit] Cricket-related

  • (1993) The Cricket War: the Inside Story of Kerry Packer's World Series Cricket
  • (1994) The Border Years
  • (1995) One Summer Every Summer: An Ashes Journal
  • (1996) On Top Down Under : the Story of Australia's Cricket Captains
  • (1997) Summer Game: Australian test cricket 1949-71
  • (1997) Australian Cricket Anecdotes (ed.)
  • (1999) Mystery Spinner: The Story of Jack Iverson
  • (1999) Wisden Cricketers' Almanack Australia 1999-2000
  • (2000) Wisden Cricketers' Almanack Australia 2000-01
  • (2001) The Big Ship: Warwick Armstrong and the Making of Modern Cricket
  • (2002) Many a Slip: A Diary of a Club Cricket Season
  • (2002) The Vincibles: A Suburban Cricket Odyssey
  • (2002) Endless Summer: 140 Years of Australian Cricket in Wisden
  • (2004) Game for Anything: Writings on Cricket
  • (2005) Ashes 2005: The Full Story of the Test Series
  • (2006) Peter the Lord's Cat: And Other Unexpected Obituaries from Wisden (ed.)
  • (2006) The Book of Ashes Anecdotes (ed.)

[edit] Other

  • (1987) The Battle for BHP
  • (1999) One of a Kind: the Story of Bankers Trust Australia 1969-1999
  • (2003) The Uncyclopedia
  • (2004) Fat Cats: The Strange Cult of the CEO
  • (2004) Tencyclopedia
  • (2006) Asbestos House

[edit] References

  1. ^ Australian Booksellers Association, 82nd Annual Conference (2006). “NB: PDF is 3.2 megabytes in size.”
  2. ^ "Brisbane Writers Festival - Gideon Haigh"
  3. ^ http://www.slv.vic.gov.au/programs/literary/pla/jcprize/winner2006.html
  4. ^ "Information Idol: How Google is making us stupid", The Monthly, February 2006

[edit] External links