We all know Gina Rinehart loves the Australian Olympic team, and has poured somewhere between $40m and $60m into swimming. But does Australia’s richest person also love journalists?
Apparently she does, judging by her commitment to sign on in 2024 as the major sponsor of the Kennedy awards for outstanding journalism, named after the late Sydney crime reporter Les Kennedy.
Hancock Prospecting, along with subsidiary S Kidman & Co, was a major sponsor of the event for the first time. The mining billionaire’s largesse extended to bringing to the table, literally, party pies for nibbles with drinks at the after-party. Guests told Weekly Beast they were delicious, albeit a tad cold. Rinehart owns the cattle company S Kidman & Co which makes the pies.
Rinehart’s chief executive, Adam Giles, the former chief minister of the Northern Territory, represented his boss at the event. Sitting at the top table with Giles was Sky News host Rita Panahi, managing director of the Australian and the Daily and Sunday Telegraph John Lehmann and Nationals senator Bridget McKenzie.
Kennedys’ chair Carl Dumbrell gave a speech at the start of proceedings in which he made special mention of Rinehart and her recent funding of the Olympians.
It’s quite the turnaround for Rinehart, who in 2013 was seen by some as an enemy of journalism when she tried, and failed, to subpoena the award-winning West Australian journalist Steve Pennells to hand over all notes and recordings in relation to a billion-dollar trust fund dispute.
Journalists were apprehensive when Rinehart bought significant shares in Fairfax and Network Ten more than a decade ago. Rinehart said she had an interest in the news media because of “its importance to the nation’s future”.
She took a 10% stake in Ten and eventually owned an 18.67% stake in Fairfax. She sold her Fairfax shares in 2015 after reportedly failing to secure a number of board seats after refusing to agree to the company’s charter of independence.
The Kennedys journalist of the year went to the ABC’s global affairs editor John Lyons. The judges commented: “Since the attacks of October 7, 2023, John Lyons has been the most authoritative Australian voice in both reporting and analysing this generational calamity.”
Guardian Australia reporters Christopher Knaus and Lorena Allam won a Kennedy for a series of stories that revealed the government-run controversial debit pay system was being used as a vehicle for economic abuse.
Write off
With her journalism hat on Rinehart wrote an opinion piece for the Murdoch tabloids calling for lower taxes for business.
“Without a shift our goose will be cooked” appeared in the metros as part of the Bush Summit, an annual News Corp Australia series championing regional and rural issues.
Citing “massive rates of business failure”, Rinehart argued for the elimination of payroll tax, licence fees and stamp duties, saying governments are “too large, too expensive”.
As the owner of what she says is “the most successful private company ever in Australia’s history”, she would say that wouldn’t she.
Lean times
The media industry continues its brutal culling of staff. On the back of the departure of 85 journalists from Nine publishing, we can reveal the publisher of the Australian Women’s Weekly, Gourmet Traveller, Better Homes and Gardens and more, Are Media, has waved goodbye to magazine veterans Lisa Hudson and Nicole Byers. Staff were shocked when the hardworking Byers was let go after 20 years of editing for the company formerly know as Bauer.
Hudson and Byers were the general managers of the homes and lifestyle division respectively, overseeing the publication of the magazines and their digital sites.
A spokesman for Are Media said “the perfect storm of economic pressures, a volatile advertising market, and an evolving media landscape” meant the company had to make “tough decisions”.
In more sad news for journalism, the specialist agriculture and environment rounds at AAP will wind up later this year as their philanthropic funding comes to an end, the AAP CEO, Lisa Davies, has confirmed. Reporters Liv Casben and Tracy Ferrier will depart the wire service when their contracts end.
“Environment and agriculture are important parts of AAP’s core news coverage across the country,” Davies told Beast. “As a not-for-profit media outlet, we are grateful for philanthropic support and it will continue to play a crucial role in AAP’s future, including for specialist content and fact checking.”
Shakes it off
After four decades of bringing joy to readers, cartoonist and illustrator John Shakespeare is joining the ranks of the 85 editorial staff from Nine publishing to take a voluntary redundancy.
“It’s been a dream job, far more than I’d hoped for when I arrived as a naive Brisbane boy in the 80s,” he said. “The blank sheet of paper waiting for an idea has always terrified me, but when it works it’s the best fun ever.”
Rebekah Brooks drops by News Corp with Birkin in tow https://t.co/JlpvHqK1Ue CBD column @smh @theage pic.twitter.com/0HEoLqfRVV
— john shakespeare (@johnshakespeare) May 23, 2024
One of the privileges of working for the Sydney Morning Herald (known as Fairfax when he joined) is having Shakes draw your farewell card when you leave. We asked him how many he had drawn over the years and he said there were hundreds, too many to count.
Shakes said he is going to be busy next week as he has another dozen or so to whip up before his last day in the newsroom on Friday. So, is anyone going to pay him the compliment of drawing his cartoon for a farewell card?
“I’m actually drawing myself for Fitzy [columnist Peter FitzSimons] tomorrow at his request!”
Back on the tools
Christopher Dore is back. Less than two years after the former editor-in chief of the Australian was sacked by News Corp, ending his 31-year career, Seven West Media chair Kerry Stokes has elevated him back to the editor-in-chief status he is used to, at the helm of West Australian Newspapers and the Nightly.
The chief executive, Maryna Fewster, said: “Dorey is the best editor in Australia, and has unrivalled experience in digital and print publishing, having worked across the country as a journalist and in many senior newsroom and executive roles, including as editor of The Courier-Mail, The Daily Telegraph and The Australian.”
Sarah-Jane Tasker has been appointed the first female editor of West Australian Newspapers and will continue as editor of the Nightly until a successor is chosen.
In other moves in the West, Jessica Page has been appointed state political editor and Adrian Lowe has been promoted to Sunday Times editor.
Media gold
Female athletes took the lion’s share of the media’s attention at the Paris Olympics, with Mollie O’Callaghan and Ariarne Titmus receiving a combined 37% share of media coverage compared with other popular competitors. Between the measured period of 26 July and 11 August, Jessica Fox followed closely with 15%, receiving 7,500 mentions in print and online, according to data from media monitoring company Streem.
But when you expand the timeframe from the start of the Games to 22 August, there is another significant player – and we all know who that is.
Rachael “Raygun” Gunn soaked up 10% of all mentions of well-covered athletes, or 5,372 articles. In comparison Titmus got 22%, Fox 16% and O’Callaghan 15%. Not bad for coming last in your event.
Change not a holiday
When some ABC radio listeners tried to listen to their favourite radio stations this week – whether it be ABC Melbourne, Sydney or Brisbane – many had disappeared from the carousel on the rebooted listen app.
Quelle horreur! Other fans couldn’t find Radio National. Even worse, when listeners put “ABC Melbourne/Sydney/Brisbane” into the search function their station didn’t come up.
Listeners complained heartily, in particular the highly engaged ones who listen to Radio National’s Breakfast with Patricia Karvelas and Drive with Andy Park. The snafu was mentioned on air several times.
The app was built in-house by the product development team, who are not the most popular staff at the moment as grumpy presenters and producers take the heat from listeners.
The ABC has rebuilt the ABC listen app to create “a faster more personalised experience” but a couple of bugs which didn’t show up during testing have appeared, including the search function. (Instructions are to search for the city alone without the word ABC.)
A bigger problem however is the sharing function, which has not been built into the new app – meaning you can’t share episodes, programs or stations.
Automatic downloads of episodes from your favourite programs are no longer available and the national news bulletin is now “a live listening experience” only.
“Some features including sharing are in development and will be released in phases over coming months,” a spokesperson told Weekly Beast. There is more information on the new app here.
The radio debacle came in the same week as ABC News launched its new website.
