Ranald Macdonald (journalist) Biography, Age, Height, Wife, Net Worth and Family

In 1999, Macdonald accepted the position of Boston University’s international programme in London, where he helped to establish new overseas study programs in Auckland and Sydney. He co-founded the European Study Abroad Program (EUSA), a company which organises internships for thousands of American students a year in Dublin, Grenoble, Madrid, Paris, Sydney, London, Los Angeles and Boston.

In 1990, he began hosting ABC Radio 774/3LO’s leading current affairs show between 8:30 until 10am every weekday. He successfully increased ratings until his departure in 1995.

Having lectured on journalism at Curtin and Murdoch Universities, Macdonald accepted a position in 1987 as associate professor at the Royal Melbourne University of Technology (later known as RMIT), serving until 1995, when he accepted a faculty position at Boston University. Chilean professor Claudio Veliz, under Chancellor John Silber, headhunted Macdonald for the University Professors program, which already included Nobel Prize laureates Elie Wiesel and Saul Bellow. He became chair of the Department of Journalism within a year.

In 1985, unsuccessful investments in a string of health clubs combined with an over-commitment to unpaid positions, led to financial troubles for Macdonald.

Macdonald stepped down as managing director in 1983. That same year, the Syme–Fairfax partnership ended as the Syme family found it impossible to continue its financial support of the partnership.

In 1983, he turned down an invitation from then Chairman of the ABC, Ken Myer, to become the first Managing Director of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC).

Macdonald served as President of Collingwood Football Club from 1982 to 1986. He appointed Leigh Matthews, who later coached Collingwood to the Premiership in 1990, ending a 32-year title drought.

Before leaving The Age, Macdonald was appointed by Victorian Premier John Cain Jr. to chair Victoria’s 150th Anniversary Board from 1982–85, which organised the yearlong activities. He also represented Victoria on the Australian Bicentennial Authority (ABA) from 1983–85, but resigned, with the support of Prime Minister Bob Hawke, over his concerns about financial irregularities at the ABA.

In 1981, Macdonald prodded the Victorian Government to establish the Norris Inquiry into press ownership in Victoria, as he believed that a significant investment by John Fairfax & Sons in the Herald and Weekly Times group, the Melbourne-based rival of The Age, created a conflict of interest.

On 11 August 1973, Macdonald married Patricia Tryon in Great Durnford, Wiltshire, England. They have two children, Laura (born 30 December 1974) and Hamish (born 27 April 1977). Patricia has worked in many areas of the arts, including exhibition curation. She re-opened and ran the Melbourne office of Christie’s auction house, became head of the pictures department and later a director of the company.

In his early years at The Age, Macdonald rebuffed takeover bids by, among others, Frank Packer, his own cousin Rupert Murdoch, and The Times owner Roy Thomson. To maintain the newspaper’s independence, Macdonald created the Syme-Fairfax Partnership with John Fairfax & Sons, which allowed the Syme Trust to continue after Oswald’s death in 1967. The partnership ran from 1966 until 1983, when Fairfax bought out the remaining shares in David Syme and Co. and Macdonald stepped down as managing director.

In 1966, after two years of battles, Macdonald replaced deeply entrenched editor Keith Sinclair and appointed Graham Perkin, while Macdonald assumed the role of editor-in-chief, serving until 1970. Macdonald and Perkin guided the paper through a transformation from its staid, conservative roots to what news magazine The Bulletin called “Australia’s Most Important Newspaper”.

In 1964, a twist of fate saw Macdonald appointed to the position of managing director of The Age when his grandfather and chairman of Age publisher David Syme & Co. Limited, Oswald Syme, misheard his grandson and thought he was threatening to leave the paper unless he was given the position. He was actually suggesting the role of marketing manager. He served as managing director until 1983.

Also in 1964, the board of David Syme & Co. appointed Macdonald’s stepfather, Colonel Neill, as Chairman when Oswald retired.

As did his father, Macdonald attended Jesus College, Cambridge, where he studied law and history from 1957 to 1960. On completing his degree, Macdonald returned to Australia and worked as a cadet reporter at The Age for three years, until a fortuitous golf game with a US naval captain at Royal Melbourne Golf Club, led to an introduction to Ed Barrett, Dean of the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. Macdonald had scribbled his details on the back of their scorecard, which resulted in him attending Columbia on scholarship to study a combined business and journalism Master of Science degree (1963–64), the first of its kind in the United States.

Macdonald was educated at Geelong Grammar School, where he was a boarder from the age of 6 and attended the inaugural year of Geelong Grammar’s rural Victorian campus Timbertop, when it opened in 1953. The innovative educational program at Timbertop gained fame when H.R.H. Prince Charles attended in 1966. Macdonald greatly admired his Headmaster, Sir James Darling, who initiated Timbertop and gave the eulogy at his grandfather Oswald Syme’s funeral.

His father Hamish, a captain in the Second Australian Imperial Force, 2/19th Battalion, was killed in the Fall of Singapore on 19 January 1942, leaving three children — Ranald and two sisters, Jean and Morna. It was two years before the family had confirmation of his death.

Chesborough Ranald Macdonald AO (born 27 June 1938) known personally and professionally as Ranald Macdonald, is a retired Australian journalist, media executive, broadcaster and educator. Macdonald served as Managing Director of David Syme & Co. Limited (publisher of The Age newspaper in Melbourne, Australia) from 1964 to 1983 and as editor-in-chief from 1966 to 1970. From 1995 until 1999 he served as the Chairman of the Boston University College of Communication Department of Journalism.

Macdonald was born in Melbourne, Australia, to Hamish Claude Henry Macdonald and Nancy Alison Syme, on 27 June 1938. He spent his early years in Wantabadgery West, near Wagga Wagga in New South Wales, where the family neighbours included Sir Keith Murdoch and his family, cousins of his mother Nancy.

Macdonald is the great-grandson of powerful newspaper proprietor David Syme, who with his brother Ebenezer, bought The Age in 1854. They turned it into a powerful force for political and social change in Victoria.