Brian Johns, who died yesterday aged 79, was an adviser to prime ministers, a groundbreaking media administrator and a champion of Australian literature.
Johns was born in far north Queensland and moved to Sydney in 1947 when his father, a waterside worker and barber, opened a barber's shop in Kings Cross. He worked a paper run and did odd jobs in factories before entering a seminary at 16.
He decided against joining the priesthood three years later and moved to Canberra to work for the Australian News and Information Bureau, a government agency. He contributed informed and intelligent political commentaries to -Nation magazine that caught the attention of The Australian's first editor, Maxwell Newton, in 1964. 
He hired Johns to become this newspaper's first political correspondent, pioneering a new style of journalism that subjected both policy and politics to a forensic examination.
Johns went on to write for The Bulletin before becoming news -editor of The Sydney Morning -Herald and returning to Canberra as the Herald's chief political correspondent in 1972.
In 1974, he was recruited by John Menadue to become an -adviser to the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet under Gough Whitlam and, remarkably, held on to the post after the 1975 dismissal and the election of -Malcolm Fraser's government.
In 1979, Johns became publishing director of Penguin Books. Until his arrival, Penguin published mainly titles from its British list but Johns sought out and fostered Australian authors. An ebullient man with a ready laugh and quick wit, often entertainingly displayed over long lunches, Johns had a keen ear for a well-told story and a deeply held belief that Australians deserved to have and cherish their own stories.
He was analytical and intellectual but never lost his common touch. At Penguin, he'd stop for a yarn with the packing and distribution staff because they were the first to identify fast-selling titles.
As an adviser to Fraser, Johns did much of the preparatory work for the creation of SBS, and in 1987 Johns took over as chief executive.
He then served as chairman of the Australian Broadcasting Authority, the forerunner to today's media watchdog, the Australian Communications and Media Authority, before being appointed managing director of the ABC for a five-year term in 1995.
Johns brought a new stability to Aunty after the often-turbulent years of David Hill.
He was one of the first to identify the tectonic nat-ure of the internet and the effect the digital transformation would have on media, especially in the area of news gathering.
Johns drove the push - against entrenched opposition - to bring together the disparate elements of the ABC, abandoning the TV division's studios at Gore Hill, and the radio division's studios in Darlinghurst in favour of new purpose-built premises at Ultimo. It was an early form of digital convergence that was to shape the digital expansionist policies of his successor, Mark Scott.
In a tribute yesterday, Mr Scott said: "Brian Johns saw the future and fundamentally got the ABC's strategy right. He knew that all parts of the organisation needed to come together as one and more than almost any other media leader in the country he understood the impact that digital technology was going to make on media organisations." After leaving the ABC in 2000, Johns became a director of the Copyright Agency. He became chairman of CAL in 2003 and served for 13 years.
He was diagnosed with a rare, aggressive cancer about three months ago. He leaves a wife, Sarah Morton, and four children from his previous marriage to Beth Kirk-patrick: Brendan, Brigid, Damien and David.
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