Adam Shand

Shand is a journalist with over 20 years experience in Australian television and print media. As a cadet on The Australian newspaper in the 1980s, he covered the rise and fall of the entrepreneurs.

Joining the Nine Network in 1991, Adam reported for the Business Sunday program in Sydney and Melbourne. In 1994, he left Australia to become a freelance reporter in Africa for the Nine Network and international media organisations.

He covered the rise to power of Nelson Mandela in South Africa, the aftermath of the genocide in Rwanda and the corruption of Zimbabwe’s democracy.

Returning home in 1997, Adam joined the Today Show as Melbourne correspondent for three years, before joining The Australian Financial Review newspaper as an investigative reporter in Melbourne and Sydney.

He rejoined the Packer empire and currently works on The Bulletin magazine and the Nine Network’s Sunday and Business Sunday programs.

He spent months hanging out in cafes and bars researching the Melbourne ganglands murders in a joint investigation for The Bulletin and Sunday.

A collection of Shand's stories can be viewed at the Bluestone site.

In 2005, Shand released his book: Big Shots: Inside Melbournes Gangland Wars.

Described as Shand's personal journey into the heart of Melbourne's underworld and the infamous gangland wars, he reveals intimate details of the lives of the key figures, and looks at the media's role in creating - and destroying - them. (Buy from  Dymocks)

In 2007, he released Big Shots: The Chilling Inside Story of Carl Williams and the Gangland Wars.

In 2003 Adam Shand, until then a financial journalist, naively set out to unravel Melbourne's bloody gangland wars.

A few months' research, a guaranteed cover story.

But his foray into the underworld took him deeper than that.

Before long, he found himself counted as a friend by those who sometimes ended friendships with a hail of bullets.

Big Shots takes the reader into the heart of the city's multi-billion dollar 'disorganised crime' scene, as Shand meets key figures and suspects, including Carl and Roberta Williams, Mick Gatto, and many others.

He discovers the human drama behind the brutal slaying's that were splashed across the front pages, and in the process comes to question his objectivity. And even whether he is being used to further the players' murderous ends.