Gregory Hywood graduated with an economics degree from Monash University in Victoria in 1975,[1] and was working as an economist for automotive manufacturer Holden when he was hired as a cadet journalist by then-editor of the Melbourne bureau of the Fairfax-owned national business newspaper Australian Financial Review, Trevor Sykes.
Hywood reported on business and both domestic and foreign politics for the AFR for nearly 17 years, winning a Walkley Award in 1980 for a story he broke about the internal operations of Holden.
In recent years he has held board positions on the Tourism and Transport Forum, the Heart Foundation, the Victorian Major Events Company, and the Deakin University Council.
[7] His proposal sparked stop-work meetings among journalists at both Fairfax and rival publications,[8] as well as open criticism from the American Copy Editor's Society,[9] with some media commentators arguing that the most likely hope for newspaper survival is maintaining excellent quality,[10] something that cannot be contracted or guaranteed through outsourced sub-editing, according to Australian academic Margaret Simons.
[13] In October 2020 Hywood was appointed chair of Free TV, a role that had remained vacant since the resignation of Harold Mitchell in 2018.