Ben Hills was born in the UK and migrated with his family to Australia in 1959. He worked in various regional newspapers before being hired as an investigative reporter by The Age in Melbourne in 1969. He worked for The Age and the Sydney Morning Herald as a London-based foreign correspondent in the mid-1970s then as a Hong-Kong based publisher during the 1980s. Returning to Melbourne, Hills became assistant editor of the Age. He spent four years as a producer for 60 Minutes. Hills became the Fairfax Japan correspondent from 1992 to 1995.
He is a Walkley Award winner in 1991 for investigative reporting. He also won the Highly Commended, Graham Perkin Australian journalist of the year award in 1989. In 2015 he made the short list for the Ashurst Business Literature Prize with his title Stop the Presses: How Greed, Incompetence (and the Internet) Wrecked Fairfax. His titles include: Breaking news : The Golden Age of Graham Perkin Scribe, The Island of the Ancients : The Secrets of Sardinia's Centenarians, Princess Masako : Prisoner of the Chrysanthemum Throne, Japan Behind the lines Sydney : Hodder Headline, and Blue Murder : Two Thousand Doomed to Die, The Shocking Truth about Wittenoom's Deadly Dust.
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