The Melbourne Press Club was officially formed on November 30, 1971, at a dinner at Leon's Bistro in Prahran.
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Tony Whitlock, a former Murdoch/Fairfax staffer and then a newspaper consultant, organised the seminar. It was chaired by Patrick Tennison, then a freelance journalist for newspapers and the ABC, who was to become the founding chairman.
The seminar, called The Law and the Printer, the Publisher and the Journalist, attracted 125 journalists, publishers, editors, lawyers, radio and television executives and printers. Amongst the audience were notables such as Graham Perkin, Column Brennan, John Morgan, Geoffrey and Nan Hutton, Brian Morley and Patrick Keith of the ABC.
This was the first meeting of such a diverse group of people with similar interests in the media and many thought it would be a good idea to get together more often.
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Tony Whitlock followed up by ringing Patrick Tennison a few weeks later to help compile a list of potentially interested people, covering all sections of the media: metropolitan and suburban newspapers, magazines and trade journals, radio and television.
It started with a compact list of 21 names. Of these, 13 accepted an invitation to dinner at Leon's, where they voted to form a club, naming it the Melbourne Press Club.
They approved a constitution based on one prepared for a similar club in New Zealand.
After voting themselves foundation members of the club, the 13 formed a committee. Tennison was elected chairman.
The club decided to meet once a month "to hear first-rate speakers". All AJA members were circulated, invited to join and to attend the first luncheon meeting to be held in February, 1972.
Editors of the three metropolitan dailies - Harry Gordon (Sun), Graham Perkin (The Age) and Ces Wallace (Herald) - made a combined appearance as the club's first guest speakers.
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The original constitution described the aims and objectives of the founding fraternity like this:
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- To promote exchanges of professional information and news at a personal level;
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- To provide a social setting for informal communication between creative personnel directly engaged in publishing and the media of mass communication;
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- To sponsor informative addresses to members by distinguished speakers, and particularly by those in our field whose experience and views would most likely benefit our members in their professional activities;
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- To contribute wherever possible and desirable to the uplifting of standards in the professional areas of activities in which our members are involved.
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The MPC has maintained these ideals and expanded them in more recent rules, objectives, mission statements and goals (see Mission and Aims section). Lunches with top-quality, newsworthy speakers have remained a hallmark of the club.
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The club has had some distinguished journalists as presidents. They include:
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1971-73 Patrick Tennison
1974-75 Rohan Rivett
1976-77 Keith Dunstan
1978-79 Freda Irving
1980-81 Claude Forell
1982-83 Geoff Hook
1985-85 Columb Brennan
1986-89 Pat Hayes
1990-91 Sally White
1991-92 Noel Tennison
1992-95 Jim Clarke
1995-97 Steve Harris
1997-99 Mike Richards
1999-03 Neil Mitchell
2003-06 Ian Henderson
The current president is John Trevorrow.
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The club received a substantial boost in the mid-1990s when it launched the Quill Awards for Excellence in Victorian journalism. The awards were established in 1995 with the drive of Steve Harris, then editor-in-chief of the Herald & Weekly Times, who was looking for a vehicle to celebrate local journalism in an award system that did not require union membership, like the national Walkley awards. Another key ingredient of the Quills was that they included television and radio awards; this was an important development in broadening the appeal of the club. Steve Harris persuaded Tattersall's to come on board to support Victorian journalism through the Quills, and Tatt's has been the club's principal sponsor ever since.
At the Quills the club co-hosts the Graham Perkin Australian Journalist of the Year Award with The Age Company. The club also co-hosts the Grant Hattam Award, which is sponsored by the Herald & Weekly Times. This award is named in honor of the leading media lawyer who died in 1998. For six years it was presented annually to the person who made the greatest contribution to journalism or press freedom through courage and determination against the odds, characteristics shown by the man whose memory it honors. In 2005, the Hattam Award was merged with the Quill for Best Investigative Journalism.
Each year, more awards were added to the Quills to recognise all facets of the profession. The 2000 Quills attracted record entries and attendance (nearly 600) at the dinner in April 2000.
The turn of the Century was a period of rapid growth of the club. Membership had grown to more than 500 by the end of 2001. In September 2000, the MPC co-hosted a special luncheon for former South African President Nelson Mandela on World Reconciliation Day. The luncheon was televised nationally on the ABC.
In October 2001, the club's 30th anniversary celebrations included a Journalism 2001 Conference attended by more than 400 people.
The club also published a history of the MPC by life member and former president, Keith Dunstan. The book is on sale through the MPC office.
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