(MENAFN- The Conversation) Perhaps the most profane opening paragraph in the history of Australian journalism can be found in one of Black Inc.'s avowedly highbrow Quarterly Essays.“Those Chinese fuckers are trying to rat-fuck us,” Kevin Rudd is quoted as saying, in David Marr's June 2010 edition of the essay series. Profane, yes, but on point.

It was not just that a prime minister had sworn but that it was this particular PM. Marr in QE38 Power Trip: The political journey of Kevin Rudd was profiling Rudd soon after he had failed to persuade the Chinese (and others) to a binding agreement on climate change at the Copenhagen summit in late 2009, which marked the beginning of the end for his prime ministership.

Today, Rudd is Australia's ambassador to the United States, but then he was known as a rarity among the nation's prime ministers for combining an ability to speak Mandarin, a penchant for jargon (“programmatic specificity” comes to mind), intellectual fervour and extraordinary popularity, which exceeded Bob Hawke in his prime. If Rudd used slang in public, it was cringy Ockerisms like“fair shake of the sauce bottle, mate”.

The Black Inc. essay series, which began in early 2001, is marking its 100th issue, with the release of The Good Fight: What does Labor stand for? by Sean Kelly. The success of the Quarterly Essay is a significant achievement in Australian culture, and one not really given its due. Most commonly, the essays have been about politics, the environment, foreign affairs, business, Indigenous issues, society and religion.

A good number of them have taken the form of profiles, especially of politicians. All prime ministers since 2001 have been the subject of Quarterly Essays, as have opposition leaders Malcolm Turnbull and Tony Abbott (before they became prime minister), Mark Latham, Bill Shorten and Peter Dutton. David Marr has written five of these profiles, about John Howard, Rudd, Abbott, Shorten and the One Nation leader, Pauline Hanson, along with a sixth essay on George Pell.

Usually around 25,000 words, the Quarterly Essay is rare, if not unique, in being pitched in what American author and editor John Tayman has called the publishers'“dead zone” between a long magazine article and a book. Tayman came up with the concept for a series of short e-books to be published by the digital company, Byliner, in 2009, two years before the arrival of Amazon's Kindle Single in 2011. Pitched to a similar part of the reading market as the Quarterly Essay, they enjoyed a surge of popularity that appears to have faded amid the rise of podcasts and social media.

Former Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd attends the launch of the Quarterly Essay Red Flag, Waking up to China's challenge by Peter Hatcher in 2019. Lukas Coch/AAP

Sales of Quarterly Essays, however, generally range between 10,000 and 23,000 (occasionally more), which puts them in bestselling territory in Australian publishing. They are sold in newsagents as well as bookshops, building on a base of 8,000 dedicated subscribers, according to the long-time editor, Chris Feik.

In recent years, the essays have also been made available as e-books. It is remarkable that a product conceived for and mostly still published in print has survived so long when the 21st century mantra in media and publishing is“if you're not constantly innovating, you're dying”.

A number of essays have won Walkley awards, including Crabb and Marr's profiles of Turnbull and Rudd respectively and David Kilcullen's Blood Year: Terror and the Islamic State. Paul Toohey won two, for Last Drinks: The impact of the Northern Territory Intervention and for That Sinking Feeling: Asylum seekers and the search for the Indonesian Solution.

The length of these essays requires the author to go beyond a columnist's daily bloviation. They need to do some research and make an argument. This means most of the essays have something hefty to say that breaks through the necessary superficiality of most daily news. They are usually very well written. That's what publisher Morry Schwartz and editor Chris Feik want, but the form also attracts some of the nation's best writers: Tim Flannery, Raimond Gaita, Germaine Greer, Sarah Krasnostein, Anna Krien, David Malouf and Don Watson, among others.

Not all Quarterly Essays are journalistically driven. Some are more personal or discursive works in the tradition that goes back to the 16th century French essayist, Michel de Montaigne. Micheline Lee's QE 91, for instance, Lifeboat: Disability, humanity and the NDIS, combined the author's lived experience of spinal muscular atrophy with an elegantly written and carefully argued analysis of the flaws as well as the promise of Labor's National Disability Insurance Scheme.

Nor has the series won unanimous support. Apart from those such as Rudd or Abbott who found themselves in its crosshairs, the Quarterly Essay has been perceived by some as the preserve of Black Inc. authors or those in its circle. Early on, it was certainly the preserve of male writers, with only one woman (Amanda Lohrey ) contributing to the first ten issues. The gender balance has improved since but overall, it stands at 65 men, 35 women.

Some Quarterly Essays have been forgotten but the best of them have made a substantial contribution to how we understand ourselves as a nation. (The full list can be found here.) At a time when Meanjin, an early and longstanding influence on national culture, has been closed in mystifying, controversial circumstances, publications like the Quarterly Essay are needed more than ever.

'An angry heart'

Unlike full-length books, which take time to digest, a Quarterly Essay is short enough to read in a couple of train commutes. It can then quickly become a talking point across media channels. Over the years, many essays have generated news, prompting discussion, sometimes controversy, for weeks. Marr's piece about Rudd is probably the best known example.

It was released in June 2010, just three weeks before Rudd was forced to stand down as prime minister. Was the timing coincidental, considering the essays are commissioned up to a year in advance, or was it what might be called long-range news judgement? That is, news judgement attuned not to daily news but to events and issues playing out over months and years.

To what extent did the identity of the author, one of Australia's“brand name” journalists, play a role in intensifying concerns about Rudd that had been steadily building since his failure at Copenhagen in late 2009?

David Marr spent three months on his Quarterly Essay on Kevin Rudd. Black Inc.

One of Australia's most accomplished and eloquent journalists, Marr spent three months researching and writing the essay. It combined an incisive analysis of Rudd's political strengths and weaknesses with vivid journalistic writing. A telling insight Marr gathered was that, despite Rudd's reputation as a policy-oriented intellectual who drilled into every option with a PhD student's fervour, many of his solutions to policy problems were surprisingly mundane.

The essay finished with what quickly became a much-debated scene where Rudd speaks from an“angry heart” after Marr has told him at the end of their time together the planned argument of his essay, which is negative overall.

It is a stunning scene, upending the late author Janet Malcolm's famous aphorism that journalists first seduce then betray those they write about.

In Malcolm's example, journalist Joe McGinniss gained access to the legal team representing Jeffrey MacDonald by persuading them he believed in MacDonald's innocence. After MacDonald was convicted, McGinniss continued to sympathise with him (in nauseatingly fulsome tones) while hiding from MacDonald how he would be portrayed in his book – as a cold-blooded killer.

Marr, on the other hand, brazenly confronts his subject with his intended damning critique. He then, equally brazenly, makes the confrontation the final dramatic moment of his essay. This scene saw the essay generate news in its own right, followed by around 20 media appearances in which Marr promoted the essay and argued his case.

Marr also, in my view, has a nose for long-range news, as he repeated the feat with another essay, Political Animal: The making of Tony Abbott, in 2012. It didn't contain a similarly explosive scene, but instead a revelation about Abbott as a student allegedly punching a wall close to the head of a female political opponent. (Abbott denied the punch ever occurred, saying it was the work of a Labor dirt unit, while Feik defended Marr's research and sourcing.) The revelation had a similarly explosive impact on public debate, tapping into concerns about Abbott's aggression and his views about women.

My top ten picks

Different readers will respond to different Quarterly Essays but for what it is worth, here are ten that made the most impact on me.

QE28, Exit Right: The unravelling of John Howard, by Judith Brett. An excellent analysis of how and why the four-term Liberal/National Party coalition government led by John Howard collapsed.

QE34, Stop at Nothing: The life and adventures of Malcolm Turnbull, by Annabel Crabb. The best profile I've read about Turnbull, deftly capturing“Good Malcolm” and“Bad Malcolm”.

QE38, Power Trip: The political journey of Kevin Rudd, by David Marr. For those who only know Rudd as the country's US ambassador, this essay offers insights into him and the politics of the early 2000s.

QE43, Bad News: Murdoch's Australian and the shaping of the nation, by Robert Manne. A full-frontal assault on how The Australian misuses its influence.

QE50, Unfinished Business: Sex, freedom and misogyny, by Anna Goldsworthy. A nuanced exploration of the appalling gendered treatment of Julia Gillard when she was prime minister.

QE67, Moral Panic 101: Equality, acceptance and the Safe Schools scandal, by Benjamin Law. An anatomy of a destructive campaign by the national broadsheet newspaper.

QE77, Cry Me a River: The tragedy of the Murray–Darling Basin, by Margaret Simons. A carefully researched, clearly written examination of a complex, seemingly intractable issue.

QE79, The End of Certainty: Scott Morrison and pandemic politics, by Katharine Murphy. Written during the global pandemic, this essay reminds us of the challenge politicians and bureaucrats faced as they struggled to manage COVID-19.

QE90, Voice of Reason: On recognition and renewal, by Megan Davis. Read this and the case for the Voice is clear and compelling. Unfortunately, too many read misinformation and disinformation online.

QE97, Losing It: Can we stop violence against women and children? by Jess Hill. A cogently written essay that sifts through the competing strands of social policy thought about how to quell violence against women and children.

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