Readers never tire of the write stuff: Gottliebsen
Robert Gottliebsen wakes up at 5.30am each weekday with business on his mind, and turning 80 won’t change that routine.
Monday to Friday, Robert Gottliebsen gets up at 5.30am, with the world of business on his mind.
“I have a bit of a fossick around, I might have a biscuit, and then I write my column,” he says, with his unmistakeable tone of breathless excitement.
It’s a simple routine, but Gottliebsen says rising early has always worked well for him. So why stop now?
Gottliebsen — “I’m Robert at home, Bob in the office, and Gotty to plenty of others” — turns 80 on Thursday, and remains as excited about his “adventure in journalism” as the day he first walked into the newsroom of The Melbourne Herald in 1958, just after he’d finished Year 12.
Gottliebsen is believed to be the oldest journalist working on a daily mainstream Australian publication, and has almost certainly been in the game for longer than anyone else.
“The column” he refers to is his daily 800-word piece, which is published first on The Australian’s website and then in the newspaper, and is considered a must-read for the nation’s sharpest business players and observers.
“I usually have a plan in my head about the column when I go to bed, so I’m ready to go when I sit down to write it each morning,” the grandfather of five says.
One of Gottliebsen’s passions is arguing for more favourable conditions for small and medium enterprises, including the easing of onerous tax burdens and the need to end unfair contracts.
But he says at this point in his career, his own contract with The Australian is simple.
“If I have had enough, I’ll ring them and tell them I’m leaving; if they have had enough of me, they’ll do the same. Simple as that. But I have no plans to stop!”
Gottliebsen, who was inducted into the Australian Media Hall of Fame in 2017, boasts an enviable bio. At just 21, he was appointed business editor of The Sydney Morning Herald.
“I was over-promoted. No doubt. I wasn’t ready for it,” he says.
“It was strange to be in a position where staff knew I wasn’t up to it. But once I earned their respect, it was fine.”
He’s the founder and original author of the legendary Chanticleer column, which still appears in The Australian Financial Review, almost 50 years later.
In the 1980s, he launched Business Review Weekly, and later Personal Investment, which were the biggest industry magazines of the decade, notwithstanding Kerry Packer’s repeated attempts to steal their market share.
“We had a lot of fun, but it was an incredibly risky project. We lost a lot of money in the early days but we turned it around,” he recalls.
“It was a good lesson to learn — if you get the journalism right, the readers will come.
“And that’s still as true today as it ever was.”
In 1983, he published Australia’s first-ever magazine Rich List.
“That sent circulation to the next plane,” Gottliebsen says, while admitting that the concept was not without its challenges.
On the day before the release of the Rich List issue, he took the magazine’s entire staff to a pub in Melbourne’s Little Collins Street — partly to celebrate, but mostly to avoid the prospect of last minute legal action by any aggrieved rich listers.
Gottliebsen, a Walkley Award winner, is optimistic about the future of journalism.
“Only a few years ago, I wasn’t so sure, but now I can see a really clear path for the future of quality journalism in Australia. You only need to look at how people returned to trusted sources of news during COVID. People are seeking out quality journalism and they are prepared to pay for it.”
As to how he will celebrate his birthday, Gottliebsen says he will enjoy a small get-together with family and friends. But not before he’s filed his column.
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