There’s too much bad news permeating the world of journalism and its tenuous business models. But now we can report some genuinely good news.
Crikey is embarking on a serious editorial expansion. Over coming months we will be assembling a team of around a dozen full-time reporters with a challenging brief: dig, probe, uncover, explain, expose, deconstruct, connect the dots, lift the veils and help our readers better understand the back-stories, the side-stories and the stories someone somewhere doesn’t want you to read.
We’re calling this “inquiry journalism”. We have now started recruiting reporters and an editor with journalistic nous; dedication to facts and accuracy; determination, grit and persistence; a distaste for spin and managed news; a passion for independent journalism untainted by corporate influence and ideological agendas; a mind open to original and unconventional ideas; and, above all, a fierce, unrelenting curiosity — and we’re looking for them here.
This initiative, which aims to launch by April, is the culmination of a long-running collaborative project between our company Private Media (owner of Crikey) and two of our bigger investors, John B Fairfax and Cameron O’Reilly.
John B Fairfax’s family has a storied history at the centre of Australia quality journalism. It started 177 years ago when his namesake acquired The Sydney Morning Herald, and ended two months ago when Fairfax Media was taken over by the Nine television network and, in the process, the Fairfax name was jettisoned.
Cameron O’Reilly’s family controlled the global media company Independent News and Media — which included a stable of Australian regional newspapers, The Independent in London, the Irish Independent and the New Zealand Herald — for more than 35 years.
Now the Fairfax and O’Reilly families have returned to journalism in a different way, as investors in an ambitious venture within Crikey, which has 18 years of digital independent journalism under its belt.
You can read their comments here, and you can start reading the work of Crikey’s team of inquiry journalists in a month or two.
Eric Beecher is the chairman and editor-in-chief of Private Media.
38 thoughts on “Crikey is assembling a team of a dozen ‘inquiry journalists’”
John Ryan
February 11, 2019 at 3:45 pmAbout bloody time the utter gutlessness of the MSM & the arrogance of the NEWS/SKY conglomerate is over the top these people think we are as stupid as they are,
Get in the & hammer shit out of all of em Australian politicians ave had it to go for to long,kick em to death Good luck
Annie Humphries
February 11, 2019 at 3:52 pmThis is great news. I look forward to the first articles. Thank you.
colin77
February 11, 2019 at 4:11 pmThis is an excellent venture. Congratulations.
applet
February 11, 2019 at 4:17 pmWish you the best for the adventure.
I hope it means that the occasional links-promos for NYT articles is now binned.
Franki Elliott
February 11, 2019 at 4:29 pmBring it on!!
GF50
February 11, 2019 at 8:05 pmAbout time!! Go for it.
Andrew & Franki Domestik
February 11, 2019 at 8:29 pmHey Beech – the direction you are heading is the right one. With adequate funding I am sort of thinking you intend to put “it” out there. But what is “it”? All I know is some of the most commercially prolific news sites are the so called alternative media sites that tend a wee fringe. They are really killing the pig. Not sure about the content but they keep every man his dog coming back for more, always stretching the accepted view, which hey!!!..is probably more closer to the truth anyway. Ah yes, what is truth? All the best.
Margaret Marshall
February 11, 2019 at 8:32 pmYes Erik, bad news is not negative news as negative news is good news. News is what someone somewhere where does not want published. The rest is advertising.
Now let us see something on “The Banks” The Royal Commission is over and as the world runs on money the Banks are the liquid oil that makes liquidity and everything run well or run badly.
Why is it now all quiet on the Banks just when the Royal Commission is over. Now for this enterprise of Crikey, by crikey will you borrow from a bank? Questions need to be asked about the banks and why it has been reported that the Australian banks are making 13 percent while overseas banks are making 10 percent on average. Don’t leave out the banks. we did not have a Royal commission for nothing. It cost the Australian people money.
Robyn King
February 11, 2019 at 9:03 pmNever has it been more critical to develop this initiative. Congratulations. There are plenty of stories. We desperately need investigative journalists to “dig below the surface” on many issues, but none more important than climate change, political donations and tax avoidance.
klewso
February 12, 2019 at 12:50 amWill it extend as far as the BS spread by other outlets – bearing in mind the effect such fake news has on voter perceptions, before they vote?
The intent of other outlets (including foreign owned – not necessarily GetUp!) to influence electoral outcomes based on their dissemination of politicised opinion passed off as news?
Where the abuse of position by the newsmedia becomes the news?