A columnist and sketch writer for the Australian, James Jeffrey, has resigned to join opposition leader Anthony Albanese’s staff as his speech writer.
Jeffrey, who has worked for the News Corp publication for 16 years, is the editor of the humorous daily column Strewth and the author of several books.
Jeffrey and Albanese are friends and the Labor leader launched his memoir, My Family and Other Animus, last year.
Look who just dropped into the office with a @Pat_of_Tempe special brew. Thanks @James_Jeffrey. pic.twitter.com/kvTrpesrmF
— Anthony Albanese (@AlboMP) June 16, 2015
His is the latest in a series of recent departures from the national paper since the election, including social affairs reporter Rick Morton, investigative reporter Anthony Klan, business reporter Ben Butler and veteran football writer Ray Gatt.
While Klan and Morton have been critical of the paper’s direction under editor-in-chief Chris Dore, Jeffrey has not disparaged the paper publicly but has never been a cheerleader for the Coalition either.
Butler has resigned to join the staff of Guardian Australia.
Rupert Murdoch’s Australian media company just made 55 journalists redundant across all its mastheads – on top of dozens of staff in non-editorial areas of the business.
Production staff were targeted for redundancy as the production processes have been streamlined.
After 16 wonderful years at @australian - yes, even the bits that involved @jonkudelka - I am off to toil in the word mines as speechwriter to @AlboMP. It'll be bittersweet leaving here, but here's to a grand new adventure.
— James Jeffrey (@James_Jeffrey) June 25, 2019
As well as his memoir, Jeffrey has written The Wonks’ Dictionary, with cartoonist Jon Kudelka, and Paprika Paradise about his Hungarian heritage.
Huge loss to The Oz and its readers.And for what?Maybe @James_Jeffrey can be the new Freudenberg,but the importance of political speeches has been steadily declining. https://t.co/dxopt25jec
— LaurieOakes (@LaurieOakes) June 25, 2019
Morton left the paper after opening up in a public forum about working for the Australian during the election and at a time when the “craziness has been dialled up”.
“There is a real mood that something has gone wrong,” he said in a podcast posted online by UTS last month.
“People will tell you going back a decade it used to be a very great paper, and in many ways it still is, but some of the craziness has been dialled up.
“We know what the empire is, we know what the papers do, but something has changed in the last six months. I don’t know what it is. Death rattles or loss of relevance? And journos pretty much spend all day talking about it.”
