Walkley Award winning journalist dies, aged 90

A WALKLEY Award winning journalist, who began his career at The Chronicle, has died, aged 90.

The Australian reports Evan Whitton, whose trailblazing “gum shoe” reporting helped uncover some of the country’s most notorious police corruption scandals, died in hospital on Monday night.

Whitton grew up in Murgon in the South Burnett region and started his 50-odd year career in journalism in Toowoomba.

He picked up his first Walkley Award early in his career during a short stint at the Melbourne scandal scandal newspaper Truth.

While in Melbourne, he exposed allegations of police extortion at abortion clinics, coverage which led to the Kaye Inquiry and won him the second of four more Walkleys in the 1970s — earning him a place in the inaugural Australian Media Hall of Fame in 2011, The Australian reports.

In 1981, Whitton joined Fairfax Media, first at the National Times as assistant editor and then editor, before moving to the Sydney Morning Herald as chief reporter in 1981.

He also worked for The Australian as an investigative journalist.

Australian media personalities have taken to social media to express their condolences.

“One of the greats of Australian journalism has left us,” author Peter FitzSimons wrote.

“I will forever owe him for suggesting, at a rugby dinner in 1984, that I pursue a path of writing for the Herald.”