Terry McCrann is presumably retiring.
This is it. My final regular column.
It completes a journey that I embarked on 46 years ago, when in 1978 I first started writing a daily business and economic commentary column.
And I continued, writing, for most of that time, six columns a week, unbroken since.
Albeit, with along the way, some time off for good – or indeed, bad – behaviour. So, I guess I’ve totted up somewhere north of 12,000 in total.
For nine years, I was writing first in Melbourne’s The Age newspaper and then also in its sister paper The Sydney Morning Herald.
And for the last 37 years it’s been in Melbourne’s The Herald, its subsequent incarnation as The Herald Sun, along with The Weekend Australian, The Telegraph in Sydney, Brisbane’s The Courier-Mail and The Adelaide Advertiser.
It’s been a rollicking ride. For you and me both. Although, I’ve had the time-honoured journalist ‘privilege’ of ‘power without responsibility’.
But far more specifically, the privilege of the ‘insider’. Of the access to the decision-makers, when the big decisions were being made in business and government.
Terry was one of the few journalists in the country that had the power to move markets. His prognostications about the RBA often shifted futures.
He was also one of the very few people to engage with fringe commentary like that of MB. His commentary upon us was even-handed and fun (I recall him labelling me “LSD” on one occasion when he disagreed with my view).
The production of six columns per week put most of his peers to shame and prefigured the kind of output that the likes of MB are capable of.
Finally, Terry was far more balanced in assessing risks than the wider MSM. This gave him the rare commodity of appearing sane in an insane media.
You will be missed, Terry, and we wish you well.
