Just when you thought you’d seen the back of Tony Abbott, the former prime minister is about to be back in the limelight in the form of a series of books about his legacy, all written by top journalists and all competing for attention.
The first book to hit bookshops – on 18 November – is written by Sky News commentator Peter van Onselen and academic Wayne Errington. Peter van Onselen’s book focuses on Abbott’s whole prime ministership and is called Battleground: Why the Liberal Party Shirtfronted Tony Abbott.
Niki Savva, political commentator for the Australian, has joined the rush with a book called The Road to Ruin: How Tony Abbott and Peta Credlin Destroyed Their Own Government, which focuses more on the dramatic end of his premiership. Published by Scribe, it is out early next year. With her distinctive take-no-prisoners style, Savva’s book will argue that Abbott listened to Credlin over his own ministers and it was their close relationship that led to his ruin.
The third book is written by Aaron Patrick of the Australian Financial Review and is also due out in early 2016. Patrick’s book was to be called The Warriors, but has just been given a new, sexier title by publishers Black Inc: Credlin & Co: How the Abbott Government Destroyed Itself.
“It is the story of a relationship that determined the fate of a government,” the blurb says. “It shows in stunning detail the disastrous consequences of power abused, and the broken people left in its wake.”
Foreign correspondents’ postings under Christmas shadow
In a speech at the Lowy Insitute last year Malcolm Turnbull lamented how the number of foreign correspondents had fallen dramatically in recent years. It was mainly due to the cost, he said, which for one post in Indonesia was $300,000 a year.
“In the 1960s the Herald and Weekly Times maintained five journalists in London, three in New York, full-time correspondents in Paris, Rome, Singapore and Rabaul, plus shared correspondents in Johannesburg, Tokyo, Toronto and New Delhi. Fairfax maintained large bureaus in London and New York,” Turnbull said.
But the golden age of the Australian newspaper correspondent is well and truly over after multiple closures of bureaus operated by both Fairfax and News Corp. The Australian alone has closed bureaus in Washington, New York, Los Angeles, Bangkok and New Zealand in recent years.
Fairfax Media is now closing its key foreign bureaus in Washington and Beirut. Sources say editors have told correspondents Nick O’Malley and Ruth Pollard to be home by Christmas. However, Paul McGeough, the chief correspondent for the Sydney Morning Herald and the Age is staying put in Washington – for the time being, at least.
Fairfax’s London bureau was formally closed three years ago and now the post is staffed by a contractor, Nick Miller, who is employed locally. That leaves Fairfax with just two official posts: China (Philip Wen) and Indonesia (Jewel Topsfield), plus Lindsay Murdoch as the south-east Asia correspondent, based in Bangkok. The Delhi bureau was closed in April.
The ABC is now the only media company with an extensive network of foreign bureaus, now totalling 11.
Fairfax moves in for another round of redundancies
In more bad news for Fairfax readers and staff, management has its sights set on another round of redundancies in the new year. First, editors at the Sydney Morning Herald and the Age in Melbourne are meeting with each journalist to assess how they are coping with the transformation of the company from a newspaper into a digital-first operation.
Staff are also being told at these meetings that if they are thinking about taking a redundancy, now would be a good time to put up their hands. If management doesn’t get the numbers they want – and we don’t know what they are – they will move to forced redundancies next year. Fairfax declined to comment.
No swish Christmas party for News Corp this year
But it’s not just Fairfax that is doing it tough. News Corp Australia has cancelled its all-in company staff Christmas parties this year. The company has always put on a big catered bash at a posh venue in each state for all staff, editorial and non-editorial. But staff at the Herald Sun, Courier-Mail and Daily Telegraph have been told there won’t be a company-funded party in 2015. No word on whether individual mastheads will pay for their own parties for disappointed hacks. A company spokesman declined to comment.
The Australian Financial Review formally moves into the digital age
The Australian Financial Review has formally recognised the digital age is here to stay by integrating the website with the daily printed paper and making the content digital-first.
After a visit to the Financial Times in London, editor-in-chief Michael Stutchbury decided the time had come to move away from the focus on the traditional newspaper evening deadline.
“The key to making this happen is to publish more of our best content through the day (and then into the paper for the next morning) rather than most of us organising most of our time around a 4pm to 6pm copy print deadline,” Stutch said in a leaked memo.
Under the new structure the role of afr.com editor will be abolished and the “unified news desk itself will run the newsroom, coordinate and plan our major news gathering efforts, run most news conferences, commission stories and then edit and publish them through afr.com and its home page”.
The integrated newsdesk will run by Fiona Buffini and James Thomson and the printed paper will be coordinated by Aaron Patrick, who has the new title of deputy editor (print).
“In effect, the traditional structure will be inverted,” Stutch said. “Until now, a newsdesk and newsroom that traditionally focused on producing a newspaper has operated with a digital desk alongside it, albeit one aligned much more closely than only a few years ago.”
“Under the new structure, the integrated newsdesk will run afr.com while our newspaper operation will run alongside this.”
Steve Pennells turns down role with Four Corners
The ABC’s Four Corners may be the pinnacle of investigative journalism in this country but the pull of working there wasn’t enough for seasoned newspaper journalist, fledgling TV reporter and acclaimed photojournalist Steve Pennells to abandon his roots at the West Australian.
The five-time Walkley award-winning journalist, who branched out into television in 2013 on Seven’s Sunday Night, was recently offered a job at Four Corners but turned it down.
“I’m not going anywhere,” he told Weekly Beast. “Four Corners is an iconic program with a long history of outstanding journalism. Any journalist worth his salt would be honoured to be a part of that. But Seven West has been my home for the best part of two decades and has given me some amazing opportunities. I owe my career – and five Walkleys – to the West Australian newspaper and, two years ago, Sunday Night led me in my first tentative steps in front of the camera. The team at Sunday Night is second-to-none and I’ve got plenty to do in 2016, both with the network and with the West Australian, which I’ll continue to write for.”
