Writer Case Study:

John Silvester

Anthony Read

Background…

John Silvester is a veteran Melbourne-based Australian crime writer. He currently writes for The Age
Newspaper, and used to be the chief police journalist for the Melbourne Sun (Melbourne Crime,
2000). During his time, he has been nominated for four Walkley awards, and has won one for ‘Best
Use of the Medium’ in 2004. He has also won the Graham Perkins Australian Journalist of the Year
award in 2008, and was nominated for the same award in 1998 (Melbourne Writers Festival, 2009).

At the Age, he has assumed the role of the senior crime and police writer. His writing is split
between two main forms: feature writing and hard news. One can see the difference between the
two forms by searching his name on the Factiva database. His features normally number between
2000-2500 words, and usually consist of an in-depth analysis of one major crime topic or character.
His shorter hard news pieces are typical of hard news, but he manages to put his own stamp on
them by incorporating subtle feature writing techniques. Because of his high standing within the
journalistic community, he can use these otherwise frowned-upon devices and get away with it.

One trait that Silvester exhibits is a balanced outlook on his subjects. When the subjects in question
involve drugs, murder and crime syndicates it could be easy to pick sides, but Silvester demonstrates
as objective an outlook as possible. In an interview conducted on ABC Local Radio, Silvester talks
about the personalities of the Underbelly world. He shows no remorse for their actions, but at the
same time he has the clarity to feel pity for the children stuck in those situations. He also talks about
how all underworld figures may put forward a sense of superiority and fearlessness, but inside they
are just as scared as anyone else about death or punishment (ABC Local, 2009). This ability to see
both sides of the underworld clearly is a testament to his journalistic abilities.

His Feature Writing Features…

Silvester has a knack for writing profiles that makes people seem larger than life, yet human at the
same time. His profile of judge Frank Vincent does just that. Silvester’s ability to capture ambience
and atmosphere with simple wordplay is demonstrated as he paints a picture of the young judge on
one of his first cases. He uses phrases such as “the two young lawyers sitting at a restaurant table
are filled with red wine and indignation”, “they scrawl their final submission on restaurant napkins,”
and “they wake the next morning with dry mouths and second thoughts”. None of these phrases are
particularly showy, but in our mind’s eye we can see the young Vincent at that same table, debating
the case before him. Silvester also shows an ability here to tell a simple fact-based story with vigour.
He weaves the history of Vincent’s judging career with small anecdotes from the man himself.

Another example of how he makes characters larger and smaller at the same time is when he talks
about Vincent’s reputation as a “go-to guy for the tough, controversial or emotion-charged criminal
trials”. This sentence makes Vincent seem like an immovable movie judge type, but a few lines down
changes all that as he talks about horrible moments from his career, such as the case of the “Bega
girls”, which he describes as “nothing other than grotesque” and that “these things stay with you”.
Silvester has managed to cut to the core of this character and really expose him for what he is, which
is the mark of a fine feature writer and interviewer.

In a feature titled ‘Pack Mentality’, one can compare the beginning to the leads we see in hard news
everyday. In hard news, the inverted pyramid presides over all, and ‘Pack Mentality’ certainly would
not wash as a straightforward news story. Where this story comes into its own is precisely there: in
the lead. The first six pars of the story detail the familiar story of a lone man being set upon by a
pack of youths at night. The true lead, or ‘billboard’, comes in par seven, where Silvester says,
“Welcome to Melbourne, one of the most liveable cities in the world”. This single sentence drips
with so much personal contempt from Silvester that it certainly would not get past an editor for a
basic news story. The fact that it is a feature allows that slight bias to be used, and the previous six
pars is truly what makes this sentence so venomous. If that sentence began the story, one could
think it to be about Melbourne’s fantastic nightlife. How wrong they would be.

Another interesting aspect of Silvester’s writing is that he has a tendency to add a short list at the
end of most of his features. This can be seen in ‘Pack Mentality’, as he succinctly describes a series of
inner city bashings in short, sharp pars. This is quite a good way of rounding off a story, and allows
the reader to put the characters of the feature into context. Another story in which he uses this
technique is entitled ‘The Case of Judy Moran: All Will Be Dealt With’. This profile on Judy Moran and
her family ends with a sentence separated into different lines for each family member. It describes
each person, their connections to the person before and after them, and also their criminal charge.
It really allows the reader to see how deeply embedded the criminal interest is in her family, and it a
real point of difference for Silvester.

The story ‘Crime Scene’ was written around the time of the gangland war and murders in 2003.
When one reads this story, one can see the influence for the ‘Underbelly’ series that Silvester co-
authored with fellow crime writer Andrew Rule. The story itself revolves around a single one-day
following of a lead in a small area of Melbourne. The real hook of the story comes almost at the end,
where it is revealed that police were trying to track and apprehend a criminal for a petty offence,
but it ends up in the murder of Michael Marshall, and the killer being shortly arrested afterwards.
Silvester shows the police in this story to always be one step behind the criminals, and the only real
break they get is when they make the arrest at the end. By that time, the murder had already been
committed and there was not much else to do. This story differs from much feature writing in the
fact that Silvester makes no attempt to hide the fact police were not up to scratch that day, an does
not give us an easy way out or a happy ending. This makes a good feature because it makes the
reader think more deeply about the issues raised and whether what the characters did was right,
wrong or otherwise.

Silvester also has a way of introducing a reader to the underworld, and its vast array of characters,
with ease. His story ‘Wise Guys, Tough Guys, Dead Guys’ illustrates all the main players of the
Melbourne crime syndicate operating in the early 2000s. In one fell swoop, he illustrates each
person, giving them both an aura beyond any normal person, yet also imbuing them with very
human qualities. He begins this story be separating the underworld figures of the time into two main
groups: the Wise Guys, and the Tough Guys. He quickly sorts most of the characters into these two
categories, but leaves one particular person out of any explicit tagging. Alphonse Gangitano was the
main player in the recent television adaptation of Silvester and Rule’s work, but Silvester paints a
very different portrait: “Alphonse John Gangitano was known as the Robert De Niro of Lygon Street,
yet while he had earned a reputation as a gangster he did not appear to earn a living. He listed his
occupation in his will as "gentleman””. These two sentences instantly create the character of
Gangitano, giving him the movie-star quality of a Godfather-type gangster. However, his own
description of gentlemen suggests two separate paths.

On the one hand, this description may allow Gangitano to fit snugly into the type of Tough Guy that
Silvester describes. His lack of income, but his rich lifestyle, shows that he earned his cash in less
than honourable ways. However, the ‘gentlemen’ part of the par sheds a wholly different light on
the subject. From this sentence we take an almost tragic element to Gangitano. Silvester, through
this one word, suggests a flawed hero: someone who tried to live up to the standards held by
American gangsters of the past and movie-star heroes such as De Niro, but failed due to the
restraints of reality. Again, Silvester has an uncanny ability to paint these mythical people as more
and less than mythical, giving them human qualities beyond what we saw on the Underbelly series.

While not a straight example of feature writing, Silvester’s take on the slaying of Lewis Moran is a
perfect example of how his stature in the community allows him to write hard news with a different
approach. His story, ‘Moran’s last, fatal mistake’ is a textbook example of how to combine hard
news and feature elements, while keeping an objective view. The lead of this story is where this
synthesis is most apparent: “Lewis Moran just would not listen... until yesterday evening when the
last thing he heard was the gunshot that took his life.” This lead sums up the basics of a hard news
lead, namely that Lewis Moran was killed on the 31st May 2004, and that he was ignoring police calls
for him to act safely. Where the lead differs is that Silvester does not use a traditional style for his
lead. He writes his lead in a more suggestive fashion, allowing the reader to fill in the blanks and
create the scene for themselves.
Silvester always has many quotes from various sources in his stories, and this article is no different.
He quotes many underworld figures, including Roberta Williams, Mick Gatto and Carl Williams. As
Silvester is a prominent crime writer, he has many contacts on both sides of the law, and they give
him information that can spice up a story or provide a lead. Silvester under his 3AW pseudonym, ‘Sly
of the Underworld’ use the more sensitive material, and it is clear that from the amount of quotes
he gets from these people, that they trust him immensely with their secrets. Silvester used thee
quotes in his stories not only to spice them up, but to provide some unusual perspectives. When Carl
Williams, on the night of Andrew Veniamin’s murder, told Silvester to “hold tight and fasten your
seatbelts”, it insinuates Williams as part of the murder, yet keeps enough detail hidden for him to
remain innocent.

John Silvester has carved out a niche of his own in the journalistic scene. He has combined both hard
news and feature writing into a package that is completely his own. His status in the community,
journalistic and wider, allows him access to sources and information far beyond anything a normal
journalist would be able to access. Leading on from this, his ability to use this information in subtle
ways allows him to write fascinating stories but keep his sources and informants out of harm’s
reach. His feature stories are in a very Silvester-esque tone, being a objective analysis of a single
situation or character with a slight commentary by Silvester himself. His straight news pieces are
also in a similar vein, except he allows the hard news aspects to take precedence over the feature
writing features. His ability to create atmosphere and ambience is second to none, and the same
goes for his ability to write characters as real people and mythical creatures at the same time. There
is truly no writer in the Australian journalistic sphere that can relay all these aspects so effortlessly,
and all the awards he has won are absolutely deserved.
References

Melbourne Crime, 2000. ‘John Silvester’.

http://www.melbournecrime.bizhosting.com/john.silvester.htm. Accessed 13/9/09.

Melbourne Writers Festival, 2009. ‘John Silvester’.

http://www.mwf.com.au/2009/content/mwf_2009_standard.asp?name=SilvesterJ. Accessed
13/9/09.

Silvester J, 2003. ‘Crime Scene’.

http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2003/12/12/1071125658667.html. Accessed 18/9/09.

Silvester J, 2004. ‘Moran’s last, final mistake’.

http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2004/03/31/1080544564175.html. Accessed 22/9/09.

Silvester J, 2009. ‘The Case of Judy Moran: All Will Be Dealt With’. The Age, 17/6/2009.

Silvester J, 2009. ‘Defender of Ideals’. The Age, 22/8/2009.

Silvester J, 2009. ‘Pack Mentality’. The Age, 17/7/200