Hi Crikey.
Have admired Crikey for many years. Have wanted to subscribe for quite a time. But I keep stumbling over the starting line.
First of all what sort of organisation is Crikey, in a legal sense? Owners? Structure? Who pays the reporters? How is Crikey’s income derived?
Crikey stands as a lighthouse in Australia illuminating, without spin, what’s really going on in the country. I’d like to know what’s really going on in Crikey before I subscribe. Many thanks. I don’t feel at risk in giving my details.
Dear Reader,
Firstly, thank you for writing in. As you know, we have plenty to say about the owners of other “news” outlets. So it seems plenty fair that you might have questions about who owns Crikey and how it is paid for.
As a legal entity, Crikey is a wholly owned subsidiary of Private Media Pty Ltd. Private Media is a privately owned company. Eric Beecher is the largest shareholder with slightly more than 40% of the company. Eric is also the chairman of the company.
Other significant shareholders include the Fairfax family via their family office Marinya Capital, and Cameron O’Reilly via Bayard Capital. Notable smaller shareholders include Paul Barry and Allen and Unwin Pty Ltd. None of these shareholders have any involvement in the day to day running of the company, including our editorial work.
Private Media also owns SmartCompany and The Mandarin.
Crikey is almost entirely funded by its readers. 98% of its revenue comes from subscriptions. We make less than 2% of our revenue from advertising (and absolutely none from categories like gambling). The editorial team has no involvement with the advertising revenue, which is sold almost entirely programmatically (which means, almost without exception, we never speak to the advertisers or know what campaigns are running at any given time).
Across the group, Private Media makes about 40% of its revenue from advertising, 50% from subscriptions, and the remainder coming from events and licensing deals, including money coming from the news media bargaining code (through which Google, and until earlier this year, Facebook parent company Meta, paid news publishers a fee in order to continue hosting their content).
So, who owns Crikey?
Well, as above, like all private companies, we have shareholders. But at the risk of stealing someone else’s marketing line, only our readers can buy us. We’d love you to join that group. Hopefully these answers make that slightly more likely.
Will Hayward
Private Media CEO
