Progressive media mogul Piers Grove’s new venture has abruptly stopped publishing following a Crikey investigation, as one former employee says that the company has already missed deadlines for promised payments.
Last month, Crikey revealed that the serial media investor — involved in publications like The Betoota Advocate and The Daily Aus — owed staff at his recently launched company General Publishing tens of thousands of dollars in unpaid salaries, mere months after launching.
Since then, the company’s politics publication The Politics, which was purchased from Schwartz Media in late 2023 for a sum Crikey understands was $200,000, has not published anything, diverging from its usual daily publishing schedule.
General Publishing’s music vertical, Check Check, also ceased publishing towards the end of last month.
Two former contributors for The Politics told Crikey they had received emails from General Publishing telling them the publication was going on a “hiatus”. At least one email blamed Crikey’s investigation for “finishing [The Politics] off”.
The Politics’ former flagship columnist Rachel Withers left the publication being owed months’ worth of salary by General Publishing and later agreed to a payment plan of $500-a-week offered by Grove in July.
But last week, Withers said she had received the first payment but not the second.
On July 18, bank records, seen by Crikey, show that Withers received $1000 from General Publishing. An email provided to Crikey by Grove last month promised Withers “weekly instalments of $500”.
On August 5 bank records show Withers received $500 from the company. The next day, on August 6, Crikey sent questions to Grove and another payment of the same amount was received that day.
Grove didn’t respond to our questions, but did message Crikey’s editor Gina Rushton on LinkedIn asking when this article would be published.
When told it was set to publish on Thursday, he replied “Thanks for the update.”
Clarification: A previous version of this article did not include reference to a third payment received by Rachel Withers from General Publishing. The article has been updated to include more detail about the payment timeline.
