New prize to honour Harry Gordon


This article was originally published in 2015. 

The Melbourne Press Club will create a new national journalism prize – the Australian Sports Journalist of the Year Award – to honour Harry Gordon.

Gordon, one of the greatest war correspondents, sports writers and newspaper editors of his generation, died last month at the age of 89.

The Harry Gordon Sports Journalist of the Year Award will recognise excellence in sports reporting across all media platforms and all sporting codes in Australia.

The Melbourne Press Club will form an advisory panel including eminent sporting personalities and sports administrators to guide the establishment of the award. The Club has also begun the search for a suitable national sponsor.

Gordon’s son Michael said his family was pleased to support an award recognising his father’s lifetime contribution to Australian sport and journalism.

“We are very happy that the Melbourne Press Club has chosen to honour Harry in this way,” Michael Gordon said.

“One of the pleasures of Harry’s career was the encouragement he offered to other journalists and this award will be an incentive for all who write about sport to aim high.”

Melbourne Press Club CEO Mark Baker said it was hoped the first award would be made in early 2016.

“Harry Gordon was a great friend of the Melbourne Press Club and a foundation inductee of our Media Hall of Fame. This award will uphold the high standards of sports reporting and writing that Harry held dear.”

Baker said the award would sit proudly alongside the Club’s management of the Australian Journalist of the Year Award, which honours legendary Age editor Graham Perkin, a close friend of Gordon.

After reporting the Korean War, Gordon covered his first Olympic Games in Helsinki, in 1952. That began a lifelong engagement with the Olympic movement and many books that recorded the “golden era” of Australian Olympic sport in the 1950s and 60s.

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