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AbstractHistoryArchive Description
'Michael Cannon is best known as the author of landmark and popular works of Australian history, including The Land Boomers (1966), and as the founding editor of Historical Records of Victoria. But Cannon, the child and grandchild of important figures in Australian independent journalism, developed a fascination with print media early in his life and had a long and colourful career in printing, publishing and editing books, newspapers and magazines. In Cannon Fire he brings to life many notable personalities with whom he worked, including Keith and Rupert Murdoch, and recreates the ink-stained, cigarette-smoke-filled and always well-lubricated worlds of publishing across Melbourne and Sydney in the second half of the twentieth century. More than this, Cannon's intimate account of a life that began in the 1920s fascinates as both a personal story of unusual courage in the face of challenge and heartache, and as a tale of times now passing from memory.' (Publication abstract)
Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of
Works about this Work
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Tales of Hustling : Memoirs of an Indefatigable Editor
2023
single work
review
— Appears in: Australian Book Review , January - February no. 450 2023; (p. 48-49)
— Review of Cannon Fire : A Life in Print 2022 single work autobiography'Journalist, editor, and publisher, Michael Cannon rose to prominence in print during its golden age of boundless advertising dollars, when those ‘rivers of gold’ paid for high salaries, fully staffed beats, and morning and evening newspaper editions. This was not a world of shrinking pages and newsroom cuts, of ‘digital-first’ mantras, click bait and Murdoch domination – not yet. But newspapers were not necessarily more sophisticated places either, which makes Cannon’s memoir as much a rejoinder to the lionising of lost newspaper culture – a challenge to the notion that things were always better back then – as the story of a remarkable career.'(Introduction)
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Tell Me, Young Man, Are You a C-c-communist?
2022
single work
review
— Appears in: Inside Story , November 2022;
— Review of Cannon Fire : A Life in Print 2022 single work autobiography'Hired young by Keith Murdoch, Michael Cannon made his name as a journalistic roustabout and gifted historian'
-
Tales of Hustling : Memoirs of an Indefatigable Editor
2023
single work
review
— Appears in: Australian Book Review , January - February no. 450 2023; (p. 48-49)
— Review of Cannon Fire : A Life in Print 2022 single work autobiography'Journalist, editor, and publisher, Michael Cannon rose to prominence in print during its golden age of boundless advertising dollars, when those ‘rivers of gold’ paid for high salaries, fully staffed beats, and morning and evening newspaper editions. This was not a world of shrinking pages and newsroom cuts, of ‘digital-first’ mantras, click bait and Murdoch domination – not yet. But newspapers were not necessarily more sophisticated places either, which makes Cannon’s memoir as much a rejoinder to the lionising of lost newspaper culture – a challenge to the notion that things were always better back then – as the story of a remarkable career.'(Introduction)
-
Tell Me, Young Man, Are You a C-c-communist?
2022
single work
review
— Appears in: Inside Story , November 2022;
— Review of Cannon Fire : A Life in Print 2022 single work autobiography'Hired young by Keith Murdoch, Michael Cannon made his name as a journalistic roustabout and gifted historian'
