2012 Lifetime Achievement Award

Dulcie Boling

Dulcie Boling won the 2012 Melbourne Press Club Lifetime Achievement Award.

In a career that began with a cadetship at the Melbourne Herald and continued through the decades in newspapers and magazines into its latest incarnation as television network board member, Dulcie Boling has made an outstanding contribution to our industry.


Award presentation and Dulcie Boling's acceptance speech at Quill Awards night


In 1978, after only three years with Southdown Press, Dulcie Boling did what few of us would have had the vision, tenacity, style and guts to do: she took a moribund 75-year-old magazine and began its transformation into the biggest-selling weekly, per capita, in the world.

From a little magazine featuring crafts and fiction, Dulcie turned New Idea into a must-read.

New Idea’s circulation grew from around 400,000 to more than a million by the late 1980s and held those figures until 1993 when Dulcie moved on to bigger things. When Australia’s population was 17 million, New Idea’s readership was 3 million.

In 1991 she was a founding director of Pacific Magazines & Printing Limited and in 1993 accepted an offer to represent News Limited on the Seven Network Limited Board. The magazines lost a powerhouse editor and executive, but Seven and many other boards and charities gained an invaluable asset.

Dulcie’s long and successful working life in the media has been a series of firsts and she has managed it all while maintaining a full and interesting private life in a family that loves, respects and admires her.

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