Clementine Ford sensationally quits Nine Newspapers saying ‘Fairfax is dead’

Controversial columnist Clementine Ford sensationally quit Nine Newspapers, declaring Fairfax is “dead” in a lengthy Twitter rant, capping off a colourful history with the media company.

Controversial columnist Clementine Ford is now asking for money from social media followers after she sensationally quit Nine Newspapers, declaring Fairfax is “dead” in a lengthy Twitter rant.

The 38-year-old used kiss emojis with the words “Anyway, bye Fairf**ked!” to conclude several brutal tweets overnight.

“Also, here’s some tea and I can spill it now that I have resigned from Fairfax: in September, they threatened to fire me because I had called transphobic Scott Morrison a ‘f***ing disgrace’ on Twitter and they said that new policy was we ‘didn’t disrespect the office of the PM’,” she wrote.

Clementine Ford

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Another one said: “I am not the only writer who’s had pieces knocked back that were critical of other news sources’ practices and elevating of bigotry. The reason? “We don’t criticise the competition.” And this too, which I heard consistently over the last year or 2: “When they go low, we go high.

“Fairfax is dead. That’s a fact,” another tweet said.

In May last year, the hard line feminist had her speech for a charity fundraiser cancelled after almost 14,000 people signed a petition against her appearance.

Also in a since-deleted tweet, Ford called then-Treasurer Scott Morrison a “racist stain on humanity”.

Last night, Ford called out her working conditions as “shitty”.

Some of Ford’s tweets overnight.

Ford sensationally quits Nine Newspapers.

“But maybe you do get to the point where you decide that your shitty salary with the shitty work conditions just isn’t enough to keep eating shit every week, and you decide that you would rather take the risk on not making rent next month just to not eat their shit again,” she wrote online.

This morning, Ford added she was not “difficult” during her seven years at the newspaper brand as she continued her overnight explanation of her resignation online.

“I expect at some point a line will be trotted out about how I was ‘difficult’. Don’t believe it,” she said.

“I was a loyal and committed contributor for 7 years and they benefited greatly from me being connected to the masthead.”

Her latest post simply says: “Anyway, support my Patreon!” and provided a link to a website where fans can donate money.

Nine announced its takeover of the Sydney Morning Herald last year as part of a $4 billion deal which saw the name “Fairfax” disappear from the nation’s media landscape.

Monique Farmer, Life Editor of The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age said in a statement: “Clementine Ford has been a contributor for The Herald and The Age for the past seven years and we thank her for her work over that time.”

Australian feminist and columnist Clementine Ford. Picture: Twitter

CLEMENTINE FORD’S HITS AND MISSES

● Following the Coalition’s 2013 federal election victory, Fairfax promoted Clementine Ford’s t-shirt range which featured the slogan: “F**k Abbott”. Management later withdrew the obscenity.

● “From the moment I spied them to the point of walking past and then for a few minutes in my seat, I was shaking. Not really from fear for my physical safety, but from realising once again that there is a certain type of man who thinks that the world and everything in it — particularly women — belongs to him.” Ford reacts to a male train passenger’s 2014 offer to shake her hand.

● Some of feminist Ford’s most hostile comments are directed at women. Four years ago she attacked Iranian-born News Corp columnist Rita Panahi with the line: “No matter how hard she tries, she’ll never be a white man.”

● To protest against remarks on the Sunrise morning TV show, which she described as being made by a “pack of intellectually bereft dickblisters”, Ford posted a topless image of herself on Facebook in 2015 with “Hey Sunrise get f**ked” scrawled on her chest.

Clementine Ford has a controversial history in the media.

● Apparently unaware that the woman in question quit her WWII factory job after two weeks for fear of damaging her hands, in 2015 Ford added a “Rosie the Riveter” tattoo to her skin collection.

● A 2016 Saturday Paper review of Ford’s first book, Fight Like a Girl, wasn’t altogether favourable: “Righteous anger, even if justified, does not automatically translate into good writing or nuanced arguments. Particularly grating is Ford’s insistence on diminishing human beings to their sexual organs … Ford’s talk-to-the-hand monotone can seem contrived.”

● Unhappy about the US election, Ford sent a Tweet to President Trump calling him a “puscilanimous ferret” and an “imbecile”. The word pusillanimous was misspelled. Ford found spelling easier in a second tweet to the president: “Can’t spell ‘c**t’ without u, Trumpy.”

● “Someone who says even hello to a person from One Nation is a pariah,” Ford once declared, also previously denouncing anyone “with connections to One Nation”. Which must have made things a little tense when Ford’s father Steven ran for One Nation in the seat of Nicklin during the 2017 Queensland state election.

● Schoolgirls walked out of a 2017 Ford speech at Melbourne’s Aquinas College after she refused to take any questions from schoolboys in her audience. “She treated the boys like crap,” a parent told Melbourne radio, adding that several girls “got up and left.”

● The ABC apologised in 2017 after Ford called The Daily Telegraph’s Miranda Devine a “c**t” on live television, after previously calling the columnist a “f**king c**t” on Twitter.

● “This is precisely part of the ongoing trauma caused by whiteness in this country.” Clementine Ford and fellow feminist Anna Spargo-Ryan, who are both white, were outraged last year when little-read magazine Meanjin erased its Aboriginal title for one edition, replacing it with the feminist slogan “#MeToo”.

Originally published as Clementine Ford sensationally quits Nine Newspapers saying ‘Fairfax is dead’