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James Chessell departs the Australian Financial Review for rival Rampart with an equity stake, while the ABC quietly cuts extended news packages and Stateline segments to shorten nightly bulletins.
James Chessell told staff last week that he was departing the Australian Financial Review, pointing to the strain of the job as exhausting. Staff at the paper say that is a tough line to buy, given he is walking into its aspirational rival Rampart with an equity stake.
There is a sense of betrayal in the air at the nation's premier financial masthead. The AFR sits in the publishing basket alongside this masthead at Nine. From left: the AFR's former editor-in-chief James Chessell, former columnist Joe Aston and newly appointed editor-in-chief Cosima Marriner in the Sydney bureau. Marriner cut her holiday short to steady the ship after news of Chessell's departure.
Rampart's ARR Alliance
She now has to make sure the defection does not become a distraction for the paper. Staff feel aggrieved, having toiled away at Chessell's punishing behest, and also by the conditions that led up to his exit. Rampart's deal with Nine helped provide it a runway to launch, supplying revenue and providing legal services and access to its photography.
That legal deal meant Aston, whose at-times vicious writing has been a magnet for defamation concerns notices, could avoid costly monthly insurance that otherwise surely would have hindered growth. It also included advertising in the AFR and the Weekend Fin, often with a pointer on the front page. Aston even called it a win-win for him at the time. When he launched his Rampart Talks vodcast series, how many are paying for the $6600 chairman's lounge tier is unknown.
Nonetheless, reader revenue is already in the millions, plus ad dollars. The Age and SMH's business editor is also leaving to join the start-up. Chessell and Aston are two of the most connected figures in the modern media game. James Packer was revealed as one of five investors in August.
Aston is famous friends with Packer and spent so much time on the billionaire's boat he even earned the nickname Gilligan. He stayed aboard for a few days after the Rampart Talks series in October last year, enjoying the luxuries of the $288 million vessel. He says the easiest thing is to just not write about Packer, until he needed a big splash for the first guest of the vodcast series. It delivered.
Power, Access and Media Conflicts
Packer is not an investor himself. 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. Joe Hockey became known as the Trump whisperer for Australians. Trump looms large over sections of Australia's corporate world.
Aston has visited Mar-a-Lago on three separate trips over Trump's two terms, each at the invitation of an Australian billionaire. Aston's first post-Chessell piece this week took the sword to those in Australia's corporate world who have legitimised our own MAGA, Pauline Hanson. How did the prevailing mood become one of weak acceptance that maybe she's not so radical? he wrote. Some journalists are rewarded with free trips to Mar-a-Lago.
Others, including some business leaders, have to pay for the pleasure. Gina Rinehart served as their chaperone this year to meet Trump, part of a deal that included $100,000 donations to One Nation. Doug Tynan of GCQ Funds Management did not get a mention in Aston's piece. He was announced as one of the five Rampart investors.
The question will be whether advertisers or investors get similar treatment to those that are not involved. Some 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. If every media organisation avoided their backers or advertisers, we would barely have any news to write about.
Antony Catalano launched 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 themselves down the line, with the help of some cashed-up connections? While this may appear unlikely, so did the events of the past week. Aston declined to comment, as did Chessell and Nine.
ABC Cuts Stateline and Extended Reports
Stateline sidelined as ABC pushes for snappier bulletins. The ABC is quietly trimming Stateline 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 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 7News or Nine News. Is it a case of Aunty's news bulletins being too slow, or has TikTok and Instagram just shortened all of our attention spans?
The Saturday and Sunday extended packages, known internally as special reports, were informally axed over the winter months. These were usually around 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. The decision also affects Stateline packages which ran at the end of each state bulletin on a Friday evening.
Stateline, which until 2011 ran as a standalone program each week in each state, was reintroduced in 2023 but did not have any of its own dedicated staff. An ABC spokesperson confirmed the changes and said that axing the extended reports allows the ABC to do more stories per program. They have planned more at its annual content showcase this month. The above could be a sign of things to come.
He left the company after the network put an interview with a chap wearing rashers of raw bacon on his shoulders before launching into an Islamophobic tirade. The show was brought to an end shortly after. News Corp racked up its 12th year in a row of paying precisely zero tax in Australia, despite posting revenue.
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theage:The good, the bad and the grumpy: Will Joe Aston’s Rampart go soft on its corporate backers?This story was compiled and edited by the HeadTopics newsroom and HT AI from the reports above.
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