Print: News Report Winners

Michael Beach and Viva Goldner, The Daily Telegraph, “Marcus Einfeld”

The Marcus Einfeld saga shows the power of simple, curious journalism. Beginning with her regular check of the Monday morning local court lists, Viva Goldner saw that former Federal Court judge Marcus Einfeld was contesting a traffic matter. Lasting just two minutes, the magistrate accepted his defence that an old Australian friend visiting from Florida had borrowed his car. The woman, Professor Teresa Brennan, had tragically died after returning to Florida.

The appearance was destined for a couple of paragraphs, until Michael Beach decided to check the bona fides of Einfeld’s “alibi” and found an Australian professor of the same name had died in a hit-and-run accident three years earlier.

The story caused an immediate sensation. Over the following weeks, the pair produced more exclusive stories on the ever-developing Einfeld mystery, resulting in the former judge and prominent human rights activist being put under police investigation for perjury.

Michael Beach is the assistant editor (news) of The Daily Telegraph. He began his career as a paper boy selling the Telegraph and the old Daily Mirror. He went on to become the Olympics editor for the Telegraph for the Sydney 2000 Games and was also News Limited’s New York bureau chief during the September 11 terrorist attacks.

Viva Goldner joined The Daily Telegraph as a cadet reporter in 2002 and has been a court and legal affairs reporter for the past two years.

Judges’ comments
The discovery that Einfeld used the name of a dead person as the driver of his car was daily newspaper journalism at its best. Beach and Goldner went back to the fundamental rules of journalism to break this story. It was a great get and a fabulous story.