Gay Alcorn is an Australian journalist and newspaper editor. She was appointed editor of ''

The Age ''The Age'' is a daily newspaper in Melbourne, Australia, that has been published since 1854. Owned and published by Nine Entertainment, ''The Age'' primarily serves Victoria (Australia), Victoria, but copies also sell in Tasmania, the Austral ...

'' in September 2020 and stepped down in December 2022. Her sister, Margo Kingston, is also a journalist.

Career

Alcorn studied arts and law at the

University of Queensland The University of Queensland is a Public university, public research university located primarily in Brisbane, the capital city of the Australian state of Queensland. Founded in 1909 by the Queensland parliament, UQ is one of the six sandstone ...

. She began her career in journalism as a cadet with the ''

Courier-Mail ''The Courier-Mail'' is an Australian newspaper published in Brisbane. Owned by News Corp Australia, it is published daily from Monday to Saturday in tabloid format. Its editorial offices are located at Bowen Hills, in Brisbane's inner norther ...

'' before moving to Melbourne. In Melbourne, Alcorn joined ''The Sunday Age'' newspaper before it launched in 1989 and worked in the newsroom across ''

'' for 20 years. From 1999 to 2002, she was based in

Washington, D.C. Washington, D.C., formally the District of Columbia and commonly known as Washington or D.C., is the capital city and federal district of the United States. The city is on the Potomac River, across from Virginia, and shares land borders with ...

as a foreign correspondent for ''The Age'' and ''

The Sydney Morning Herald ''The Sydney Morning Herald'' (''SMH'') is a daily Tabloid (newspaper format), tabloid newspaper published in Sydney, Australia, and owned by Nine Entertainment. Founded in 1831 as the ''Sydney Herald'', the ''Herald'' is the oldest continuous ...

'' where she covered the 2000 Bush-Gore presidential election and the

September 11 attacks The September 11 attacks, also known as 9/11, were four coordinated Islamist terrorist suicide attacks by al-Qaeda against the United States in 2001. Nineteen terrorists hijacked four commercial airliners, crashing the first two into ...

. During her time at ''The Age'' and ''SMH'' Alcorn won three

Walkley Awards The annual Walkley Awards are presented in Australia to recognise and reward excellence in journalism. They cover all media including print, television, documentary, radio, photographic and online media. The Gold Walkley is the highest prize and ...

for news and feature writing. She served as deputy editor of ''The Age'' from 2006 to 2008 and then as editor of ''The Sunday Age'' until 2012. She left the editorial post to return to a writing role and in 2013 launched and edited ''The Conversation''’s Election FactCheck for the Australian federal election. In 2014 Alcorn joined

Guardian Australia ''Guardian Australia'' is the Australian website of the British global online and print newspaper, ''The Guardian''. Available solely in an Online newspaper, online format, the newspaper's launch was led by Katharine Viner in time for the 201 ...

as their Melbourne editor, and opened their Melbourne offices. In September 2020, it was announced that Alcorn would succeed Alex Lavelle as editor of ''The Age'' with effect from 28 September. She is the first woman in the newspaper's 165-year history to hold the position. She decided to step down from her role as editor of ''The Age'' in December 2022 to take care of her unwell husband.

Awards and honours

* Walkley Award for Best Coverage of a Current Story (Print) 1996 * Walkley Award for Newspaper Feature Writing (Print) 1999 * Walkley Award for Newspaper Feature Writing (Print) (with Malcolm Schmidtke & Liz Minchin) 2004 *Keith Dunstan Quill Award for Commentary 2017

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Alcorn, Gay Living people Year of birth missing (living people) Australian newspaper editors The Age (Melbourne) people Australian foreign correspondents 21st-century Australian journalists University of Queensland alumni Walkley Award winners