Richard Baker

The Age/ Sydney Morning Herald

"My biggest rule in journalism – all stories start and end with people."

Richard Baker was a multi-award-winning investigative journalist and podcaster at The Age. He exposed a broad range of issues including the payment of bribes to foreign officials by subsidiaries of the Reserve Bank of Australia, and Chinese influence in Australian politics. His podcasts have explored the death of a young woman in a garbage chute, the suspected murder of an Indigenous couple, a bungled heroin smuggling operation and a botched police investigation into a murder. He now runs his own podcasting company.

Career Timeline

1998: Baker completes a Bachelor of Arts degree at Deakin University, majoring in journalism.

1999: He begins a one-year cadetship at The Age, where he is to rotate through various news sections under a system designed to give commencing journalists experience and enable editors to assess the new cadet intake. Editors quickly recognise his news breaking abilities and appoint him to cover rural affairs.  

1999-2001: His stories are regularly published on pages one and three of the newspaper. 

2001: Baker starts reporting on Victorian politics.

2003: He is appointed as The Age’s state political reporter, a key reporting position on any metropolitan news organisation. 

2005: Baker joins The Age’s new investigative team under the then senior journalist Gary Hughes.

2008: He wins a Melbourne Press Club Gold Quill award (with Nick McKenzie) for a series of stories on Melbourne’s premier hospital trauma centre and its controversial lead surgeon/director.

2009: Working with Nick McKenzie, he breaks a story about the Reserve Bank of Australia’s currency printing subsidiaries conspiring to bribe foreign public officials to obtain banknote contracts. Continued reporting leads to an Australian Federal Police taskforce and Australia’s first charges under foreign bribery laws. The companies and its senior officers later would plead guilty to foreign bribery and other charges. Baker also breaks a major story about Chinese influence on Australian politics (with Philip Dorling and Nick McKenzie). 

2016: Alive to the growing popularity of podcasts and their potential to reach vast new audiences, Baker reports and co-hosts The Age’s first investigative podcast series, ‘Phoebe’s Fall’. The podcast probes the mysterious death of Phoebe Handsjuk, a young woman, who was found at the bottom of a garbage chute in a Melbourne apartment in 2010. The podcast series tops the iTunes charts and leads to reform of Victoria’s Coroners Act.

2017: He is awarded the Graham Perkin Australian Journalist of the Year award (with Nick McKenzie) for a body of work that includes revelations about Chinese influence on Australian politics and the ‘lobster with a mobster’ scandal, which revealed that a state Opposition leader had dined with an alleged mafia boss. 

2018: Baker launches a second investigative podcast, ‘Wrong Skin’, revealing the story of a suspected double murder of a young Indigenous couple, Julie Buck and Richard Milgin, in a remote Kimberley community in 1994.

2019: A third investigative podcast, ‘The Last Voyage of the Pong Su’, is reported and narrated by Baker. It tells the story of a bungled heroin smuggling operation and raises questions about the involvement of a shadowy North Korean intelligence agency.  

2022:  Leaves The Age, and launches podcasting company, Southern Ocean Media; inaugural recipient of Beyond the Fault Lines Liffman Fellowship, Swinburne University.  

Awards

2000: Best Young Journalist award; best feature article, Rural Press Club of Victoria.

2008:  Gold Quill; Grant Hattam Quill for investigative journalism (with Nick McKenzie), Melbourne Press Club.

2009: Quill, best news report in print (with Phil Dorling and Nick McKenzie).

2010: Quill, best sports story (with Nick McKenzie); Quill, best coverage of an issue or event (with Philip Dorling, & Nick McKenzie); George Munster Award (with Nick McKenzie), Australian Centre for Independent Journalism.

2011: Walkley award, best investigative journalism (with Nick McKenzie); Grant Hattam Quill for investigative journalism (with Nick McKenzie); Quill, best news report in print (with Nick McKenzie). 

2012: Walkley award, business journalism (with Nick McKenzie); Quill, best business story (with Nick McKenzie); Quill, best sports news story (with Nick McKenzie); Grant Hattam Quill for investigative journalism (with Nick McKenzie); Quill, best news story in print (with Nick McKenzie & Jane Lee).

2013: Walkley award, print/text (with Nick McKenzie); Walkley award, coverage of major event or issue (with Nick McKenzie, Caroline Wilson, John Silvester, Jake Niall & The Age team); Quill, best coverage of an issue or event (with Caroline Wilson, Jake Niall & Samantha Lane.

2014: Walkley award, daily current affairs (with Nick McKenzie & Sam Clark); Quill, best news report in print (with Nick McKenzie). 

2016: Quill, best radio & current affairs (with Michael Bachelard). 

2017: Graham Perkin Australian Journalist of the Year (with Nick McKenzie); Gold Quill (with Fairfax Media & Four Corners); Grant Hattam Quill for investigative journalism (with James Massola, Nick McKenzie & Fergus Hunter); Kennedy Award for outstanding radio current affairs and audio blog (with Michael Bachelard, Tom McKendrick, Tim Young, Julie Posetti and Siobhan McHugh); Gold Medal, New York Festivals International Radio Awards for ‘Phoebe’s Fall’ podcast.

2019: Quill, Gold Radio, personal lives podcast, New York Festivals International Radio Awards (with Rachael Dexter, Greg Muller, Tim Young, Siobhan McHugh & Tom McKendrick); Podcast of the Year; best true crime & investigative podcast, Australian Podcast Awards (with Rachael Dexter, Greg Muller, Tim Young, Siobhan McHugh & Tom McKendrick).