Hugo Kelly

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Hugo Kelly with his partner at the Crikey Christmas Party 2005

Hugo Kelly is an Australian journalist. He is most notable for his contributions to independent online Australian news service, Crikey, from which he was sacked in February, 2006.

1 Kelly's early life
2 Early media career
3 1999 Victorian election
4 Crikey
5 References

[edit] Kelly's early life

Hugo Kelly is the son of Melbourne-born Elizabeth Kelly, and Afrikaans lawyer Beverly Botha. He was born on 29 April 1967, in London. At three, he and his mother moved to Australia. There, he attended Sunshine West Primary School and Essendon Grammar.

Hugo spent several years at university, studying journalism at RMIT and Arts at the University of Melbourne. He engaged in postgraduate studies in Media Studies at Monash University's school of Australian Studies.

[edit] Early media career

At 17, the editor of Melbourne's The Age newspaper, Creighton Burns offered Kelly a cadetship at the Spencer Street broadsheet. There, he worked with Sports editor Michael Gordon. At the Canberra bureau of the Age, he worked with Michelle Grattan. In May 1988, he interviewed the Queen of Australia during her visit to inaugurate the new Parliament House. [1] He was later promoted to C-grading and a post as The Age's transport reporter.[2] He covered the 1989 tram strike. He was at the Aerospatiale tent when a Russian MiG 29 fighter jet crashed just 100 metres away and he reported on this.[3]

[edit] 1999 Victorian election

In 1999 Kelly assisted a former Age colleague Stephen Mayne to nominate as an independent candidate in Victorian Liberal Party leader Jeff Kennett's then safe seat of Burwood. Part of the campaign strategy was a website, jeffed.com, in which Mayne, a former Kennett advisor, outlined his criticisms of the Kennett government. While the campaign was abruptly aborted when Mayne was ruled ineligible to stand by the Australian Electoral Commission, work continued on the website and it played a minor role in the surprise defeat of the Kennett government that year [4].

[edit] Crikey

On 14 February 2000, Stephen Mayne launched the Crikey website, with Kelly contributing. Kelly opened Crikey's Parliament House bureau in the Federal Parliamentary Press Gallery in 2004 and continued to contribute regularly until 13 February 2006, when he was sacked, according to Eric Beecher "because of his unprofessionalism as a journalist." [5] [6] [7] [8]