Graham Hovey Lecture 2010, Knight-Wallace Fellows at The University of Michigan

The Odd Couple: Newspapers and the Internet—Will They Ever Get Along? 

Gerard Ryle ’06 and his wife Kimberley Porteous ’06S - respectively, news editor and multimedia editor of The Sydney Morning Herald — delivered KWF’s first joint Hovey Lecture on September 10.

Video: Gerard's address

Video: My address

We're innovative, we're interactive

Fan mail from a very cool multimedia blog, Innovative Interactivity, for our Exit Iraq project. Christmas came early!

Making print media look smarter

From Monocle magazine: how the audio slideshow will save journalism.

Exit Iraq

Here's my latest multimedia project - released to coincide with Australian combat troops pulling out of Iraq, fulfilling an election promise made by our new PM. Take a look at Exit Iraq from The Sydney Morning Herald team. It was a muy intense seven days working day and night to put this together in time once we got word of the top-secret pullout date. Finally feeling human again now that I've caught up on my sleep and am eating real food... no more Fairfax canteen chocolate cookies for this chicken!

Bushwhacked!

Check out what we've done for US President George Bush's visit to Sydney next week for the APEC summit: you can give him an Australian makeover.


All part of the cool APEC multimedia we've put together for the Sydney Morning Herald.

Being a Muslim

Here's a preview of my latest project, you lucky devils. Going live tonight as part of a five-day series running in the Sydney Morning Herald titled "Islam in Australia". I was lucky enough to interview four terrific Muslims about their faith, and the misconceptions people have about their community. Here's hoping it goes some way towards building tolerance and harmony.

See the multimedia here.

No Webby for us

... but we were made "official honorees", which is better than a poke in the eye.

The First Wave: Beyond a White Australia

My latest project, about Australian immigration history, went live on Friday night. The museum, immigration and local history sets all love it, and the national multicultural broadcaster SBS produced a story on it as well. I just wish we could have secured the rights to run 20 seconds of an incendiary newsreel of the SS Misr's arrival (which berated the government for accepting displaced persons from Greece, Italy, Malta and central Europe who weren't "of our own stock"). But I'm happy it's done - now I can catch up on my sleep :-).


And socialising too - like this degustation dinner we're going to on Sunday night at Three Clicks West. They had me at "Terrine of roast peppers and potato with goats’ cheese mousse and toasted brioche". Or the "Baked cauliflower custard with mustard pickled vegetables, cauliflower tempura and Gruyere beignet". Or the "Pressed mushroom and potato pave with wild mushroom ragout, bread sauce,
crispy leeks and braised kohlrabi". Autumn's the most rewarding time for gustatory pleasures!

Walkley night

Thanks for your hundreds of sweet congratulatory messages; they all meant so much to me. And now, finally, are the photos you've been asking for. You all saw the biffo but you would have had to be particularly keen to sit through the entire awards telecast on SBS to see us take to the stage.

Here's the official shot. Paul (the correspondent) is on the far left, Darren (my video/audio producer) and Matt (the designer/Flash programmer) are to the left of me:


And here are Darren and me with Gerard and my editor, David, as the night wore on:


And here's what we won for: The War of Ideas. (And here's what the judges said).