Richard Walsh (Australian publisher)

At the Australian Book Industry Awards in May 2019 Walsh was presented with the Lloyd O’Neill hall of fame award for services to the Australian book industry.

As of 2018, he was lecturing at the University of Sydney.

A 2015 news item from the University of Wollongong reported as follows: "Richard Walsh lectures part-time at Sydney’s Macleay College and is the author of eight books. He is also a business consultant at the software developer, itechne, and Consultant Publisher at Allen & Unwin."

In 2008 the Association of Magazine Publishers of Australia conferred a Lifetime Achievement Award on Walsh for his "Outstanding Contribution to the Magazine Industry", noting as follows:

Looking back in 2006 on his involvement with OZ, Walsh commented:

The task that faced Walsh when he first arrived at Angus & Robertson was daunting. "While still recognisable as a former leviathan, [the firm] was in fact close to death," he recounted in a case study published in 2006.

In 1986 Walsh was appointed director and publisher of Australian Consolidated Press (ACP). Walsh oversaw the firm's more than 60 magazines, including The Bulletin, The Australian Women's Weekly, Cleo, Australian House & Garden, and Wheels. Owned by Kerry Packer, ACP controlled a huge share of Australia's magazine market. After ACP's takeover in 1988 of its rival Fairfax's magazines, Walsh was responsible for even more top magazines including Woman's Day, People, Dolly and Good Housekeeping. In 1990 he was promoted to chief executive.

Walsh was a founding member of the Literature Board of the Australia Council (1973–76), the President of the Australian Book Publishers' Association (1986), the Chairman of the Nimrod Theatre, the Chairman of the Australian National Commission for UNESCO (1989–93), the Chairman of the Quest for Life Foundation (1991–94), and a member of the Library Council of New South Wales (1992–95).

During the leadership of Walsh, POL attracted some of Australia's greatest journalistic talent, with issues guest edited by such as Germaine Greer (1972) and Richard Neville (1974) and writers including Charmian Clift.

In 1972 Walsh was appointed as chief executive of the major Australian publishing and bookselling firm Angus & Robertson (A&R). During his 14-year tenure Walsh promoted a strategy of mass market books (in areas such as self-help, health and Australiana) in a successful attempt to improve the financial fortunes of the firm.

In the years 1971–1978 Walsh edited the Sunday Review (later renamed the Nation Review), a weekly newspaper noted for its mocking left-of-centre political commentary, its offbeat cartoons, and its iconoclastic reviews, with a stable of fine writers and young and talented cartoonists. According to Walsh, his aim with the Nation Review was to take part in the creation of a "more stimulating, more sophisticated and more passionate Australia". Referring to the Nation Review under Walsh's editorship, John McLaren wrote: "As [the Nation Review] developed..., it consciously adopted the role of an alternative press, publishing news that others ignored and cultivating a brash larrikin style of writing that bruised many sensitivities but also recalled some of the older traditions of Australian journalism going back through Smith's Weekly to the early Bulletin".

In 1968 Walsh became founding editor of POL, an important magazine of its era that has been described as "distinctively Australian, lively and intelligently sexy".

From 1968 to 1970 Walsh was also Creative Group Head at the advertising firm J. Walter Thompson.

In 1963, while still a university student and editor of Sydney University's Honi Soit student magazine, Walsh co-founded and co-edited the satirical underground alternative OZ magazine. Together with co-editors Richard Neville and Martin Sharp, he was sentenced to prison for obscenity (the convictions were quashed on appeal).

Richard Walsh (born John Richard Walsh; born 21 July 1941) is an Australian publisher, editor, company director, media consultant, lecturer, broadcaster and journalist. For many years he ran the publishing and bookselling firm Angus & Robertson and later he headed the media company Australian Consolidated Press. In those roles he was "one of the most dominant figures in Australian publishing from the early seventies".