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The Australian Financial Review faces internal turmoil as former editor-in-chief James Chessell departs for a rival publication with equity stakes, sparking feelings of betrayal among staff. Meanwhile, columnist Joe Aston expands his independent media venture with lucrative ad and legal deals, while AFR's new editor Cosima Marriner works to stabilize the masthead.
In this week’s On Background, the media deal everyone on everyone’s lips, the ABC quietly trims its news bulletins, media’s best corporate citizens and the journo coming back from the dark side.told staff he was leaving the business masthead last week, pointing out that the strain of the job was exhausting.
A handful of staff from the masthead say this is a tough line to buy, considering he is walking into its aspirational rivalwith an equity stake. It’s fair to say that there is a sense of betrayal in the air in the nation’s premier financial masthead. was revealed as one of five investors in August.
Aston is famous friends with Packer and, as this masthead previously reported, spent so much time on the billionaire’s boat he evenseries in October last year, staying aboard for a few days afterwards to enjoy the luxuries of the $288 million vessel. Who wouldn’t? To be fair, he is more than open about this particular relationship, and says the easiest thing is to just not write about Packer.
That was until he needed a big splash for the first guest of the vodcast series. It delivered. Packer is not an investor himself, however.
“You get close to a lot of these powerful people in the process of writing about them and inevitably you do become friends with some of them and some of them you don’t,” Aston said on a podcast released this week but recorded almost two months ago.who later became known as the Trump whisperer for Australians. Trump appears to be a figure who looms large over sections of Australia’s corporate world.
Aston himself has visited Mar-a-Lago on three separate trips over Trump’s two terms, each of them at the invitation of Australian billionaireAston’s first post-Chessell piece this week took the sword to those in Australia’s corporate world who have legitimised our own MAGA,.
“How did the prevailing mood become one of weak acceptance that maybe she’s not so radical? ” he wrote. It’s well documented that some journalists are rewarded with free trips to Mar-a-Lago . Others, including some business leaders, have to pay for the pleasure.as their chaperone this year to meet Trump, part of a deal which included $100,000 donations to One Nation.of GCQ Funds Management, didn’t get a mention in Aston’s piece.
Wouldn’t you know it, he was announced as one of the fiveThe question will be, as coverage develops, whether advertisers or investors get similar treatment to those who aren’t involved. Some in this world say this is just a natural part of the game and that columnists always have favourites. It is the “dark arts” of how you get information.
And if every media organisation avoided their backers or advertisers, we’d barely have any news to write about.to launch a rival real estate-focused publication, later buying him out over a series of deals valuing the company at $150 million. Could Aston and Chessell be angling for a similar deal? While this may appear unlikely, so did the events of the past week.
Aston declined to comment, as did Chessell and Nine.news packages as well as its special weekend extended news stories as part of a push to make nightly news bulletins shorter and sharper, On Background can reveal.hears. Robinson has said he will sit and observe for some time before enacting change of his own, but change waits for no one.
All of this forms part of a revamp of the ABC’s nightly bulletins, which also includes a move to ensure no single package is longer than one minute and 40 seconds, more closely aligned with what you might see on the likes of 7News or Nine News. Is it a case of Aunty’s news bulletins being too slow, or has TikTok and Instagram just shortened our attention span?
The Saturday and Sunday extended packages, known internally as “special reports”, were informally axed over the winter months. These were usually about five minutes long and ran across national bulletins. Five minutes is plenty of time to dig your teeth into a story. But alas, no more.packages which ran at the end of each state bulletin on a Friday evening.
This decision is more symbolic aswhich until 2011 ran as a standalone weekly program in each state, was reintroduced in 2023, but didn’t have any of its own dedicated staff. An ABC spokesperson confirmed the changes, and said that axing the extended reports allowed the ABC to do more stories per program.at the broadcaster’s annual content showcase this month. The above could be a sign of things to come.
He left the company after the network aired an interview with a chap who wore rashers of raw bacon on his shoulders and launched into an Islamophobic tirade. The show was brought to an end shortly after. Fine judgement, I say.
On Background has been assured there will be no extremists or raw deli goods on the next series ofNews Corp racked up its 12th year in a row of paying precisely zero tax in Australia, despite posting revenues of well over $1 billion, new ATO data on Thursday revealed. Much of this revenue comes from REA Group, a company that benefits from a growing housing market.
No wonder the company’s editorial coverage has been so against Labor’s tax changes this year, which are squarely aimed at bringing down house prices. Netflix paid a grand total of $8.4 million in tax on $1.4 billion in local revenue, while TikTok Australia paid $17.3 million on $686.6 million. Journalism to communications is a well-trodden path, or say, revolving door, with companies keen to draw on the knowledge and connections those hacks have built during their time chasing stories.
Sometimes, though rarely, the lure of the chase can be too much despite newsrooms offering salaries that fall well short of corporate life. That is the case foris a media writer for The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age, based in Melbourne. Reach him securely on Signal @calumjaspan.10
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