For many years he ran the publishing and bookselling firm Angus & Robertson and later he headed the media company Australian Consolidated Press.
[citation needed] 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".
[4] Walsh originally envisaged POL as "glossy, up-market women's magazine"..., something like Queen or Nova in Great Britain which had no counterparts in Australia at that time".
"[6] 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)[7] and writers including Charmian Clift.
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".
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.
"[15] He has wryly noted that while doing so he had received a chilly welcome from the establishment of the Australian publishing world: The thirty-something hyperactive Wunderkind ... had neither gravitas nor political conservatism to recommend him, and appeared to have undergone a tact bypass.
[17] A 2015 news item[18] 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.