Malcolm Colless, Managing Director Malcolm Colless has been involved in the media and communications industry for more than 45 years. He began his career as a journalist with News Limited’s Daily Mirror in Sydney in 1962. Over the next seven years he worked in most editorial areas including finance and politics where he was the Mirror’s NSW political editor. In 1969 he went to London and worked on the Business section of the Times before returning to Sydney three years later to join The Australian  as Industrial Correspondent.  He also worked as special Australian correspondent for The Wall Street Journal and the London Evening News. In 1977 he was appointed chief political correspondent for The Australian in Canberra - a position he held until 1981 when he took up an executive role as General Manager of the News Limited owned Northern Daily Leader in Tamworth in north west New South Wales. This was the beginning of a  26 year  senior management career with News which involved  newspapers, television, pay TV and the internet. Following  the takeover of the Herald and Weekly Times group in 1987 he was appointed managing director of News Limited’s suburban newspaper operations throughout Australia. The following year he took over the role of chief executive of the Herald and Weekly Times in Melbourne launching the Herald Sun and the Sunday Herald Sun newspapers. In 1991 he returned to Sydney where he joined the board of News Limited and was appointed  Director of Corporate Development steering the company’s entry into pay TV, in what is now Foxtel, and the creation of its internet operations. In 1992 he became a director of Independent Newspapers New Zealand in which News Limited held a majority shareholding and which in turn owned the pay TV operator, Sky TV. In the mid 90s he played a major role in establishing an online joint venture company between the People’s Daily newspaper and News Limited in Beijing - the first joint venture of its kind in China.  He had previously been involved in negotiating the first television film deal between Twentieth Century Fox and China Central Television.  He also negotiated the opening of the Australian newspaper’s first editorial bureau in China. Until his retirement from News Limited in 2007 he was also in charge of dealing with political parties at a state and federal level over issues which  affected  News Limited and the media in general including the move to digital broadcasting  and media ownership laws. These laws restricting foreign and cross media ownership were  finally lifted by the Howard Government in 2006. Colless is now  a freelance writer and also runs his own company, Colless Consulting,  which specialises in politics, industrial relations, the media and communications generally.

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