In early 2022 I unblocked Crikey’s political editor Bernard Keane on Twitter. I figured it was only polite before I began editing him. He graciously unblocked me too and neither of us acknowledged it.
Little did I know, the first thing that would surprise me at Crikey was that Keane wasn’t the grumpy old bastard I’d expected. In fact, it was immediately apparent he was an editor’s dream — prolific (pitching and producing two entirely original pieces within a few hours each morning), fastidious (we barely tweak a word of his copy) and humble (some subscribers are here just for BK and yet he’s more than once said he’s not convinced his opinion on this, that or the other is particularly noteworthy).
Editing his work taught me the first lesson I’d need to edit the 600 or so editions I sent in during my time here — leave your assumptions at the door and be open to reevaluating all that makes you uncomfortable. What if your misgivings turned out to be a greyhound lover with an encyclopaedic brain? For the next two-and-a-half years Crikey became to me what, on a good day, we should be to our readers: surprising, informative, challenging, gossipy and ridiculous.
The ways in which power works in this country and the people who wield it can be absurd, yet those in the fourth estate who should be poking and prodding the powerful are too often po-faced and humourless. At my first job in news as a cadet journalist at the national broadsheet, I watched a gaggle of bemused editors gawking at a delivery from Crikey. It was a chocolate cake congratulating The Australian on five decades of climate denialism for the masthead’s 50th birthday. “That seems like a more fun place to work,” I thought, helping myself to a piece. A decade later I’d learn just how much fun it was.
We launched a Shitstirrer Index, banned AI from the newsroom, published a printout of Gerard Henderson’s words for pets to eat off, asked the viral suit guy which Australian politicians have the best suits, bickered in our own pages and published story after story that made me laugh out loud while editing.
I learned to expect the unexpected. I remember when our political reporter Anton Nilsson — better known for revealing misused taxpayer funds and the neverending shitfighting within the Liberals — let me know he’d just spotted Jordan Peterson at Canberra airport. With his signature Swedish directness, Nilsson approached the controversial media personality for an interview and revealed the details of his conversation with Scott Morrison.
Although being sued by a billionaire is up there, for me the “Crikey sick feeling” past editors have described first came late one night in December 2022 when our associate editor Cam Wilson got in touch with a concerning exclusive. He was the first reporter to find a YouTube account showing footage of the Wieambilla shooters foreshadowing violence against police in the lead-up to the tragic attack. We spent the night planning how to cover this ethically and sensitively and in the early hours the next morning got up a story that would set the news agenda for every other major outlet that day.
I came to Crikey ostensibly because I wanted to edit Cam: I’m hopelessly romantic about beat reporting and he is the best in the biz. I’m so proud of his unparalleled reporting on the teen social media ban, ongoing coverage of privacy and his damning exclusives on the media industry, including revelations about a Fox Sports executive and his investigative series into the Daily Mail and the Spectator.
There were opinion and analysis pieces that will stay with me forever, like Grace Tame’s searing essay on what it feels like to be the subject of News Corp coverage, Tarneen Onus Williams’ rousing piece in the wake of the Voice to Parliament referendum defeat, and Catriona Menzies-Pike’s review of Scott Morrison’s memoir. In particular, I will never forget a piece co-authored by Palestinian nephrologist at Al-Shifa Hospital Dr Hammam Alloh on the devastation of healthcare in Gaza. He was killed by an Israeli airstrike the next month. Weeks before he was asked why he hadn’t yet evacuated and abandoned his patients. He responded: “You think I went to medical school and for my postgraduate degrees for a total of 14 years so I think only about my life and not my patients?”
I have felt so incredibly lucky to work at an independent media company for the past few years when each outlet has faced its own specific internal battles over editorial independence. I leave Crikey believing independent media has never been more important. We do so much with so little and we haven’t always got it right but we’ve done a pretty damn good job of owning it when we haven’t, an approach that I believe is the only defendable one at a time when trust in media is so fragile.
As an outsider, Crikey has a crucial role to play in unpicking how power in legacy media works — whether it is documenting who has been on junkets or tracking newsroom cuts — but we also have a function in fighting for press freedom. Our REDACTED series showcased how journalists, politicians and citizens use freedom of information requests to bring you important stories and hold the government to account, even in the face of delays, redactions and rejections. We’re not big enough to be territorial, so instead we have a role to play in lifting up the best of Australian journalism. The final series I wanted to commission before I left was our Movers and Shakers survey of the nation’s media elite to capture an industry in flux, ask smart veterans for their wisdom, give people the opportunity to compliment each other and, of course, shake out a little gossip on my way out.
Independent media maintains its independence because of you: the readers. When you’re not relying on media moguls, gambling cash or fossil fuel money to fund journalism, you need your audience to support you. And so I finish my final piece for Crikey as I end all my daily newsletters, thanking you more than ever, for supporting independent media. I know this team will approach an election year like nowhere else and I’ll be cheering them on from the sidelines.
We’re on our way to finding you a dazzling new editor for the new year to work with our brilliant editor-in-chief Sophie Black and unflappable deputy editor Jack Callil and I’m excited to pass the baton on to someone great.
Warmest,
Gina
