Radio NZ
Ian Cross, novelist, editor and former head of NZ Broadcasting
Posted: Sunday Nov 03, 2019
Ian Cross has died aged 93. He is remembered for his significant contributions to New Zealand journalism as editor of The Listener, Chairman of the Broadcasting Corporation, and for his first novel, The God Boy - the portrait of a 13 year old boy growing up in post-war small town New Zealand, which gained even more admirers when it was turned into a TV drama. Ian Cross started his journalism career in 1943 at the Dominion but after the success of The God Boy, he took a break from the newsroom. He was awarded the first Burns Fellowship at Otago University in 1959, then spent some time in PR and as a radio and television broadcaster before being appointed as editor of The New Zealand Listener in 1973. He was promoted to chairman of the then New Zealand Broadcasting Corporation from 1977 to 1986, and two years later published a provocative memoir called The Unlikely Bureaucrat. Lynn Freeman talks with one of Ian Cross's protege's at The Listener, cartoonist, novellist and screenwriter Tom Scott........and with Ian Mune who adapted The God Boy for TV.