Australia's most prolific and prominent journalists of 2020

Chris Pash
By Chris Pash | 14 December 2020
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Australia's most prolific journalists -- or those with the longest and most prominent byline count -- have been revealed.

Media monitoring service Streem has published its annual list of journalists with the most page-one bylines in print and lead position bylines online. Joint bylines were not included. 

The overall number one is Emily Olle from 7news.com.au with 1340 bylines. 

Next was Marta Jary from the Daily Mail 1324, followed by Alex Chapman at 7news.com.au with 1318. 

The list is usually dominated by federal politics reporters, and while they also featured in 2020, several state politics writers came out on top for newspapers. 

The Sydney Morning Herald, The Courier-Mail and Adelaide’s Advertiser were three newspapers whose state political writers were number one for page ones in 2020. 

Australia’s national newspapers, the AFR and Australian, were both dominated by federal politics, with Phillip Coorey and Simon Benson recording the most page-one bylines of any reporters at one publication. 

Other federal political reporters to feature included Lanai Scarr of The West Australian, David Crowe and Shane Wright from the SMH and Age, and Clare Armstrong and Tom Minear from News Corp. 

Newly recruited national political editor Samantha Maiden also garnered the most homepage lead positions on news.com.au despite only joining the site in April. 

Streem’s analysis also looked at online reporters from 20 leading websites. 

Seven of the journalists with the ten most bylines came from Daily Mail Australia’s TV and Showbiz round, while the remaining three - including overall number one Emily Olle - were from the 7news.com.au desk. 

All 10 recorded more than 1100 bylines each, which was more than last year’s number one, the Daily Mail's Caleb Taylor. He is fifth on this year’s list. 

Olle’s 1340 stories in a year averages out to nearly six per workday throughout 2020. 

“There has certainly been no shortage of news this year, but unfortunately the economics of media became even more difficult thanks to the pandemic, and we saw a number of lay-offs at leading companies,” says Streem media and partnerships lead Conal Hanna. 

“I think there are probably lots of reporters out there who would say they’ve never worked harder than this year.”

The list did not count joint bylines, which means the total numbers of stories and page ones for many journalists would have been considerably higher, Hanna says. 

“The pandemic in particular has been a complicated, multi-faceted issue which has often required many journalists to contribute to a single story," he says. 

“Many websites had their lead position taken up for months by coronavirus live blogs that had numerous authors.” 

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