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The Sydney Morning Herald

Breaking news from Sydney, Australia and the world. Features the latest business, sport, entertainment, travel, lifestyle, and technology news.

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Featured Writers

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Richard Hookham

Experienced newspaper and digital sports journalist and sub-editor. Have worked for Mail Online, Australian Associated Press, Associated Newspapers (Metro), BBC Sport Online and ITV Teletext. Have covered international rugby union, …

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Isabelle Comber

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Daniel Lo Surdo

I have a track record of breaking agenda-setting stories spanning politics, international affairs, education, health and crime. I have an expert knowledge of SEO and social media strategy, which I’ve …

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Carmel Sparke

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Katharyn Heagney

Welcome to my desk! I am an Aussie newspaper editor and journalist. Here you will find a collection of my work, from photographs and videos, graphic design and of course, …

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James Fry is an Australian writer.

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Latest Articles

Is our language going down the toilet? My word!

I’m no linguistic purist. My brother and I exclaim “YOLO!” (you only live once) to each other, as in, “I backed into our neighbour’s car, and we didn’t realise our insurance had expired, YOLO!” Or: “Modern life is exhausting. My brain feels like a lab rat owned by sadistic scientists …
By Cherie Gilmour
• The Sydney Morning Herald

Alexei Navalny’s memoir is a reminder of literature’s true purpose

The West’s Alexei Navalny is a sketch joining three data points: his miraculous survival from poisoning, his return to Russia and his death in prison. To Putin, he was another Rasputin who bewitched Russia with the promise of democracy and survived the Kremlin’s attempts to poison, smear and assassinate. Until …
By Kurt Johnson
• The Sydney Morning Herald

From brunch to living in a war zone: how war upended a writer’s life

In an article in the German newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Oleksandr Mykhed frames the Russian invasion of Ukraine not as belligerent power play or geopolitical stunt but an outright assault on Ukraine’s very existence.The passage begins with a dream Mykhed has one night, a “whimsical homage” to Catcher in the …
By Kurt Johnson
• The Sydney Morning Herald

Steely Dan and Taxi Driver: Meet the 21-year-olds obsessed with the 1970s

Jose Da Costa and Shankari Kathirgamalingam were discussing their favourite Steely Dan tunes when they had an idea: they should start a club for young people like them to celebrate the music, fashion and literature of the 1970s in all their glory.
By Daniel Lo Surdo
• The Sydney Morning Herald

At school, they advised me to become a vet. They were so wrong

In year 12, my exasperated careers adviser tried to cobble together ideas for me based on my stated interest, “animals” (because “the Mars vending machine” and “Orlando Bloom” were apparently unhelpful). He suggested I could be a vet.After a dismal work placement emptying bloodied syringes and cleaning up dog poo …
By Cherie Gilmour
• The Sydney Morning Herald

The Mount Druitt club behind South Sudan’s Olympic stars

Diing Deng’s face lights up when he’s asked about South Sudan’s first Olympic basketball appearance.The 15-year-old’s family home in western Sydney was the place to be when the East African country’s national side, which played its first international game seven years ago, took to the court in...
By Daniel Lo Surdo
• The Sydney Morning Herald

Trump may be unhinged, but not because of the bad boogie

I’m no fan of Donald Trump, but questioning his mental health on the grounds of dancing is a low blow. Kamala Harris threw shade at Trump this week for his “bizarre” dance party moves at a rally in Pennsylvania. On social media, Harris wrote “Hope he’s OK”, alongside footage of …
By Cherie Gilmour
• The Sydney Morning Herald

We haven’t reinvented the wheel, so why the toilet flusher?

I’m madly waving my hand up and down over a sensor-operated toilet flush panel, which isn’t registering my existence. I switch up the motion, maybe a swipe to the right, Tinder-style? Nothing.Does the job, presses no buttons: an old-fashioned, pull-chain cistern. Credit: Golding/Fairfax MediaAfter a few minutes, my mind goes …
By Cherie Gilmour
• The Sydney Morning Herald

I’ve never sent a naked selfie. There’s no shame in a little shame

Yes, I see you looking at me in the change room at the pool, your mammaries doing the cha-cha as you dry what would be your short-and-curlies if you hadn’t lasered them off. I’m so pleased you’re immune to shame while displaying your naked flesh, a relief map of the …
By Cherie Gilmour
• The Sydney Morning Herald

A Very Hungry Caterpillar costume won’t mean a bookworm

Book Week rolls around again, and with it comes the predictable chorus of strung-out parents who have no time to read books themselves but are tasked with “inspiring a love of literature” in their kids. How? By dressing them up as characters from children’s books. For an entire week! Why? …
By Cherie Gilmour
• The Sydney Morning Herald

Eight years’ jail in absentia: The Russian-American journalist writing today’s history

Germany has some of the world’s strictest historical regulations and considers the Holocaust a singular event that is beyond comparison. Gessen’s essay wove together official and unofficial ways the Holocaust is remembered, how the boycott-Israel movement is framed as antisemitic in Germany, and how charges of antisemitism are now wielded …
By Kurt Johnson
• The Sydney Morning Herald

It’s next to one of Italy’s most famous sites, but few visit this side

Ercolano station whips by, a blur of terracotta and graffitied concrete. We are supposed to be out there negotiating a bus ticket up Vesuvius, the only active volcano on the European mainland. Napoli’s low swagger demands local knowledge, which includes its public transport system of overlapping modes and companies. It’s …
By Kurt Johnson
• The Sydney Morning Herald

Now AI will soften our fury at call centre staff. Let’s rage against this machine

The Japanese company SoftBank is developing an “emotion-cancelling” filter called SoftVoice for call centre workers to screen out the inevitable parade of angry people who have been waiting 2½ hours to speak with a human, just to be told that, while their call is very important, they are unable to …
By Cherie Gilmour
• The Sydney Morning Herald

Why adapting is the key to survival in climate change

THE ENVIRONMENTLiving HotClive Hamilton & George WilkenfeldHardie Grant, $27.99Clive Hamilton is a peddler of unvarnished truths; politically unpopular in the moment, they are often accepted in the fullness of time. His 2018 Silent Invasion – about Chinese influence in Australian politics – was dumped at the last moment by a …
By Kurt Johnson
• The Sydney Morning Herald

Jelena Dokic has lost 20 kilos. If only she could shed the trolls

Jelena Dokic has lost 20 kilograms. And again, we’re hit with deja vu as she’s inundated with body commentary from trolls and supporters alike.For years, body trolls have dwarfed the achievements of Dokic, arguably one of the best tennis commentators we’ve seen. She has long been both vocal and powerfully …
By Hannah Vanderheide
• The Sydney Morning Herald

Myths, spin and outright lies: the truth behind the logging industry

It was once possible to walk the 1500 kilometres from Melbourne to Brisbane enclosed in native forest. Today Australian forests have been pushed to the margins, surviving as scattered islands, logged around and through. In most states this continues, enabled by expedient myths about forest’s resilience and replaceability that have …
By Kurt Johnson
• The Sydney Morning Herald

There’s a word for this new snowflake version of Scrabble. Do I need to spell it out?

I get it – you’re a Scrabble purist horrified by Mattel’s “unforgivable” update of the game. They’ve released a “dumbed-down” version in which players work collaboratively on a series of challenges rather than compete against each other. “We want to ensure the game continues to be inclusive for all players,” …
By Cherie Gilmour
• The Sydney Morning Herald

In a fat-phobic world, Ozempic is hardly the easy way out

Imagine living in a body that is, by overwhelming consensus, regarded as wrong. Imagine being told your entire life that you need to change it. Imagine trying everything humanly possible to do that, only to wind up exactly where you started, or worse off. Now, imagine there’s a drug that, …
By Hannah Vanderheide
• The Sydney Morning Herald

China’s ‘counter-historians’ challenging the Communist Party

POLITICS Sparks: China’s Underground Historians and the Battle for the Future Ian Johnson Allen Lane, $55 In 2012, I took a five-week bullet-train tour of China’s East Coast. Hoisted on pylons, I soared above the fields and villages of old China, to the surging cities of a bold new country. …
By Kurt Johnson
• The Sydney Morning Herald

I’m teaching my child not to have a best friend

It’s crazy how quickly your child powers through noteworthy stages. In utero, they grow from a grain of rice to a grape, to a rockmelon. Then they’re born, and before you know it, they’re rolling, crawling, running, learning your real name isn’t Mum. Suddenly, they’re four years old and entering …
By Cherie Gilmour
• The Sydney Morning Herald

A new book about Bridget Jones, but not that Bridget Jones

It is a truth universally acknowledged that there is no greater love than that of a romance writer for their genre, which is especially true in the case of The Other Bridget by Rachael Johns, one of Australia’s most productive novelists. In Rachael Johns’ latest romance her main character, Bridget …
By Cherie Gilmour
• The Sydney Morning Herald

Tyson Yunkaporta’s book bristles with revelation

“There is certainly magic in the world, but it only works when you don’t try to control it and scale it.” says Tyson Yunkaporta in Right Story, Wrong Story: Adventures in Indigenous Thinking. Tyson Yunkaporta worries that Indigenous knowledge will be appropriated and exploited. To prove this point he posits …
By Kurt Johnson
• The Sydney Morning Herald

Why are doctors still telling women with endometriosis to become pregnant?

One of the first times endometriosis was mentioned in Australian media was in a 1949 article in the Catholic Weekly. Doctors in the piece prescribed pregnancy as a treatment for “one of the most crippling of female diseases”, which they claimed was suffered by women who didn’t have kids young …
By Gina Rushton
• The Sydney Morning Herald