History does not simply consist of what is on the public record. As both journalists and historians know, it is also shaped by people, events, and institutions ignored or overlooked in published accounts. For every published version there is also a ‘previously untold story’, as newspapers like to say.

This is certainly the case with The Argus newspaper. From its birth in 1846 to its sudden demise in 1957, The Argus was a Melbourne institution. In the nineteenth century, it was the newspaper adversary against which David Syme measured the progress of The Age, and in the twentieth it ranked with Keith Murdoch’s now more famous Herald & Weekly Times titles. The Argus began as a broadsheet, was politically conservative for most of its life, but ended up as a Labor-leaning tabloid. The reasons for its closure were never made completely clear.

On 24 September 2001, more than 90 people, including many veterans of The Argus, gathered at RMIT for a highly enjoyable one-day conference, entitled The Argus: The Life and Death of a Great Newspaper.

Refereed academic papers were presented at the conference, and seven papers are published here.