Foundation The Age was founded by three Melbourne businessmen: brothers John and Henry Cooke (who had arrived from New Zealand in the 1840s) and Walter Powell. The first edition appeared on 17 October 1854.
Syme family The venture was not initially a success, and in June 1856 the Cookes sold the paper to
Ebenezer Syme, a Scottish-born businessman, and James McEwan, an ironmonger and founder of McEwans & Co, for £2,000 at auction. The first edition under the new owners came out on 17 June 1856. From its foundation the paper was self-consciously liberal in its politics: "aiming at a wide extension of the rights of free citizenship and a full development of representative institutions", and supporting "the removal of all restrictions upon freedom of commerce, freedom of religion and—to the utmost extent that is compatible with public morality—upon freedom of personal action". Ebenezer Syme was elected to the
Victorian Legislative Assembly shortly after buying
The Age, and his brother
David Syme soon came to dominate the paper, editorially and managerially. When Ebenezer died in 1860 David became editor-in-chief, a position he retained until his death in 1908, although a succession of editors did the day-to-day editorial work. In 1882
The Age published an eight-part
series written by journalist and future physician
George E. Morrison, who had sailed, undercover, for the
New Hebrides, while posing as crew of the brigantine
slave ship,
Lavinia, as it made cargo of
Kanakas. By October the series was also being published in
The Ages weekly companion magazine, the
Leader. "A Cruise in a Queensland Slaver. By a Medical Student" was written in a tone of wonder, expressing "only the mildest criticism"; six months later, Morrison "revised his original assessment", describing details of the schooner's
blackbirding operation, and sharply denouncing the slave trade in Queensland. His articles, letters to the editor, and newspaper's editorials, led to expanded government intervention. In 1891, Syme bought out Ebenezer's heirs and the McEwans and became sole proprietor. He built up
The Age into Victoria's leading newspaper. In circulation, it soon overtook its rivals
The Herald and
The Argus, and by 1890 it was selling 100,000 copies a day, making it one of the world's most successful newspapers. Under Syme's control
The Age exercised enormous political power in Victoria. It supported liberal politicians such as
Graham Berry,
George Higinbotham and
George Turner, and other leading liberals such as
Alfred Deakin and
Charles Pearson furthered their careers as
The Age journalists. Syme was originally a
free trader, but converted to
protectionism through his belief that Victoria needed to develop its manufacturing industries behind
tariff barriers. During the 1890s
The Age was a leading supporter of
Australian federation and of the
White Australia policy. After David Syme's death, the paper remained in the hands of his three sons, and his eldest son Herbert became general manager until his death in 1939. David Syme's will prevented the sale of any equity in the paper during his sons' lifetimes, an arrangement designed to protect family control, but which had the unintended consequence of starving the paper of investment capital for 40 years. Under the management of Sir Geoffrey Syme (1908–42), and his editors,
Gottlieb Schuler and Harold Campbell,
The Age was unable to modernise, and gradually lost market share to
The Argus and the tabloid
The Sun News-Pictorial, with only its classified advertisement sections keeping the paper profitable. By the 1940s, the paper's circulation was lower than it had been in 1900, and its political influence had also declined. Although it remained more liberal than the extremely conservative
Argus, it lost much of its distinct political identity. The historian Sybil Nolan writes: "Accounts of
The Age in these years generally suggest that the paper was second-rate, outdated in both its outlook and appearance. Walker described a newspaper which had fallen asleep in the embrace of the Liberal Party; 'querulous', 'doddery' and 'turgid' are some of the epithets applied by other journalists. It is inevitably criticised not only for its increasing conservatism, but for its failure to keep pace with innovations in layout and editorial technique so dramatically demonstrated in papers like
The Sun News-Pictorial and
The Herald." In 1942, David Syme's last surviving son, Oswald, took over the paper, and began to modernise the paper's appearance and standards of news coverage, removing classified advertisements from the front page and introducing photographs long after other papers had done so. In 1948, after realising the paper needed outside capital, Oswald persuaded the courts to overturn his father's will and floated David Syme and Co. as a public company, selling £400,000 worth of shares. This sale enabled a badly needed technical upgrade of the newspaper's antiquated production machinery, and defeated a takeover attempt by the
Fairfax family, publishers of the
Sydney Morning Herald. This new lease on life allowed
The Age to recover commercially, and in 1957 it received a great boost when
The Argus, after twenty years of financial losses, ceased publication.
1960–1999 on 11 November 1975 Oswald Syme retired in 1964 and his grandson
Ranald Macdonald was appointed managing director at the age of 26 and two years later he appointed
Graham Perkin as editor; to ensure that the 36-year-old Perkin was free of board influence, Macdonald took on the role of editor-in-chief, a position he held until 1970. Together they radically changed the paper's format and shifted its editorial line from rather conservative liberalism to a new "left liberalism" characterised by attention to issues such as race, gender, the disabled and the environment, as well as opposition to White Australia and the death penalty. It also became more supportive of the
Australian Labor Party after years of having usually supported the
Coalition. The Liberal
Premier of Victoria,
Henry Bolte, subsequently called
The Age "that pinko rag" in a view conservatives have maintained ever since. Former editor Michael Gawenda in his book
American Notebook wrote that the "default position of most journalists at
The Age was on the political Left". In 1966, the Syme family shareholders joined with Fairfax to create a 50/50 voting partnership which guaranteed editorial independence and forestalled takeover moves from newspaper proprietors in Australia and overseas. This lasted for 17 years, until Fairfax bought controlling interest in 1972. Perkin's editorship coincided with
Gough Whitlam's reforms of the Labor Party, and
The Age became a key supporter of the Whitlam government, which came to power in
1972. Contrary to subsequent mythology, however,
The Age was not an uncritical supporter of Whitlam, and played a leading role in exposing the
Loans Affair, one of the scandals which contributed to the demise of the Whitlam government. It was one of many papers to call for Whitlam's resignation on 15 October 1975. Its editorial that day, "Go now, go decently", began, "We will say it straight, and clear, and at once. The Whitlam government has run its course." It would be Perkin's last editorial; he died the next day. After Perkin's death,
The Age returned to a more moderate liberal position. While it criticised
Whitlam's dismissal later that year, it supported
Malcolm Fraser's Liberal government in its early years. However, after 1980 it became increasingly critical and was a leading supporter of
Bob Hawke's reforming government after 1983. But from the 1970s, the political influence of
The Age, as with other
broadsheet newspapers, derived less from what it said in its editorial columns (which relatively few people read) than from the opinions expressed by journalists, cartoonists, feature writers and guest columnists.
The Age has always kept a stable of leading editorial cartoonists, notably
Les Tanner,
Bruce Petty,
Ron Tandberg and
Michael Leunig. In 1983, Fairfax bought out the remaining shares in David Syme & Co., which became a subsidiary of John Fairfax & Co. Macdonald was criticised by some members of the Syme family (who nevertheless accepted Fairfax's generous offer for their shares), but he argued that
The Age was a natural partner for Fairfax's flagship property,
The Sydney Morning Herald. He believed the greater resources of the Fairfax group would enable
The Age to remain competitive. By the mid-1960s a new competitor had appeared in
Rupert Murdoch's national daily
The Australian, which was first published on 15 July 1964. In 1999 David Syme & Co. became The Age Company Ltd, finally ending the Syme connection. , completed 2009, vacated 2019
The Age was published from offices in
Collins Street until 1969, when it moved to 250
Spencer Street (hence the nickname "The Spencer Street Soviet" favoured by some critics).
2000–present In 2003,
The Age opened a new printing centre at
Tullamarine. The headquarters moved again in 2009 to Collins Street opposite
Southern Cross station. Since acquisition by Nine Entertainment, the headquarters moved to the former's 717
Bourke Street. In 2004, editor Michael Gawenda was succeeded as editor by British journalist
Andrew Jaspan, who was in turn replaced by Paul Ramadge in 2008. In February 2007, ''The Age's'' editorial section argued that Australian citizen
David Hicks should be released as a prisoner from
Guantanamo Bay, stating that Hicks was no hero and "probably downright deluded and dangerous" but the case for releasing him was just, given he was being held without charge or trial. In 2009,
The Age suspended its columnist
Michael Backman after one of his columns condemned Israeli tourists as greedy and badly behaved, prompting criticism that he was
antisemitic. A
Press Council complaint against
The Age for its handling of the complaints against Backman was dismissed. In 2014
The Age put a photograph of an innocent man, Abu Bakar Alam, on the front page, mistakenly identifying him as the perpetrator of the
2014 Endeavour Hills stabbings. As part of the settlement the newspaper donated $20,000 towards building a mosque in nearby
Doveton. In March 2013,
The Age moved from its traditional broadsheet format to the smaller
tabloid (or
compact) format, along with its Fairfax stablemate
The Sydney Morning Herald. In December 2016, editor-in-chief Mark Forbes was stood down from his position pending the result of a sexual harassment investigation and was replaced by Alex Lavelle, who served for four years as chief editor. In September 2020, it was announced that
The Ages former Washington correspondent
Gay Alcorn would be appointed editor, the first woman to hold the position in the paper's history. Alcorn left the position in December 2022 and was succeeded by Patrick Elligett in January 2023. ==Investigative reporting==