Media Diary: Leadership change looms at Sydney Morning Herald as editor Bevan Shields faces exit
Multiple sources reveal Sydney Morning Herald's first cricket-sceptic editor will not reach five years in the role, with a surprise successor already lined up.
Bevan “Sheffield” Shields will next week mark four years as editor of The Sydney Morning Herald. The smart money says that he won’t reach the milestone of five.
Shields, who is the first SMH editor in the masthead’s 194-year history to tell his cricket-adoring audience (out loud, anyway) that he reckons our national game is a dud sport, is apparently ready to relinquish the masthead’s reins, according to multiple well-placed sources inside Nine Publishing.
The whispers are that Shields will be safely parachuted from the editor’s chair into another senior role at the masthead.
Rumours of Shields’ shaky grasp on the editorship have been doing the media rounds for several months, but as always with this kind of chatter, one must be astute in assessing the motives of those spreading the tittle-tattle before publishing the murmurs.
But as we enter killing season – not just for pollies, but for newspaper editors as well – the mail is strong: Shields will vacate the editor’s chair in early 2026, if not earlier, and will most likely be replaced by long-serving SMH scribe Jordan Baker.
It’s understood that Shields’ decision to step down is not in any way related to a colleague’s complaint about his workplace conduct some time ago.
But Shields’ time at the top of the SMH has not been without its missteps.
Early on in his tenure, in February 2022, Shields put himself in the middle of a newsroom shitstorm when he instructed his journalists to describe a state government-enforced shutdown of the rail network as a “strike”.
Strike One, you might call it.
Later that same year, Shields initially rushed to the defence of his gossip columnist Andrew Hornery, who thought it was a good idea to reveal actor Rebel Wilson’s same-sex relationship before she had decided whether she wished to publicly discuss her sexuality. Classy!
Two days later, the SMH issued an apology for its grubby attack on Wilson.
Strike Two.
In March 2023, Shields oversaw the infamous Red Alert series that said Australia was unprepared for the prospect of a war with China within three years. The series was labelled a “comic-book sketch” by Media Watch, while former PM Paul Keating described the SMH’s journalistic deep dive as “egregious”.
If Diary’s maths is correct, the predictions in Red Alert should see the Chinese arrive on our shores in the next three to four months.
Strike Three.
In April this year, Shields stunned members of his newsroom when, in the middle of a critical federal election campaign, he travelled to New York with several of his mates to celebrate a clutch of 40th birthdays within their circle of friends.
It then emerged that while on the holiday, Shields was staying – presumably for free – at the Manhattan residence of former PM Malcolm Turnbull, who had been busy undercutting the election hopes of the Coalition with carefully-worded barbs from the campaign sidelines.
Strike Four.
Diary contacted Shields on Friday to ask whether he was moving on to a new role. He declined to comment. His likely successor, Baker, did not reply to messages.
Others have insisted to Diary in recent weeks that Shields is “safe” as editor of SMH. But we’re betting change is a’comin’.
Before we let him go, let’s put one final cricket question to Bevo: Why, old mate, was the SMH the only major metro masthead in Australia last Friday to completely avoid any front-page mention of the Ashes on the morning of the most eagerly anticipated Test series in decades? Isn’t that something your readers might have wanted?
“It was something we were conscious of but we wanted to continue to back our Ukraine series, which is very important and needs to build traction/momentum,” Shields told us.
Strike Five. You’re out.
Aunty gets it right
The ABC’s annual showcase last Thursday, during which the public broadcaster’s content slate for 2026 was unveiled, was a breath of fresh air.
Why?
Because unlike the eye-wateringly expensive, heavy-handed, overly-rehearsed “upfront” presentations of the commercial broadcasters Seven, Nine and Ten – all of which push the narrative that they are the most innovative, dynamic, and ever-evolving (blah blah blah) broadcaster in the country, and claim their “Australian-ness” is unmatched by anyone, anywhere – the ABC took a different approach.
It took the piss out of itself. And it worked.
Comedian Tom Gleeson, frontman of ABC’s Hard Quiz, was the unofficial master-of-ceremonies, and seemed intent on bagging everything that Aunty holds dear – from chairman Kim Williams through to the executives that decided it would be a good idea to offload the multibillion-dollar commercial rights to worldwide smash Bluey to the BBC, to the number of Logies won by the ABC this year (“we all know the Logies is a very credible metric for measuring success”).
Fellow comedian Shaun Micallef poked fun at the public broadcaster’s decision to commission a documentary on disgraced entertainer Rolf Harris (it’s a two-part series that I’m glad to have nothing to do with … it’s the feel-good series of 2026), as well as the ABC’s controversial decision to dump ex-cricketer Glenn McGrath from its radio commentary team for the Ashes, and the clunky grammar on the autocue he was forced to read.
Announcing the ABC’s ongoing commitment to documentaries, Micallef said: “As always, commercial free-to-air television remains dedicated to the broadcast of unedifying garbage in the form of reality television, the embarrassing backward cousin of the documentary.
“The ABC though continues to provide an alternative with its commitment to proper documentaries that are inclusive, educational and not hosted by talentless hacks.
“Oh sure, the occasional talentless hack will slip through – for example, I’m presenting a doco next year called Going for Broke, in which I travel the breadth of this wide brown land to try and get to the middle of why we’re so keen to exercise what our PM describes as our ‘right to a punt’, even if it means us having no money left at the end of it. Enjoy.”
Introducing a new show to be hosted by Gruen’s Todd Sampson, Micallef said the concept of the program was “a little vague”.
“But then, Todd works in advertising and that’s their modus operandi.
“Sell them an amorphous concept and then do whatever you want with the money.”
Muster Dogs host Lisa Millar took to the stage with an 11-week-old puppy to launch the fourth season of the wildly successful program, which was a nice touch, and the few executives that took to the stage to blather on kept it mercifully brief.
Overall, it was not at all slick, and slightly shambolic, but it was genuinely entertaining and it felt authentic.
Commercial broadcasters, take note.
Waleed spreads wings?
One new ABC program that wasn’t mentioned at last week’s showcase was Radio National’s popular Global Roaming show, featuring Geraldine Doogue and Hamish Macdonald.
Next year it will expand from one half-hour episode each week to as many as four, with speculation that ABC regular Waleed Aly will join the team.
It’s understood that ABC chair Kim Williams and managing director Hugh Marks are big fans of the show – and well might they be, given that there’s plenty of other content on RN that fails to move the dial.
Elsewhere at Aunty, Diary understands that Jo Puccini is likely to be appointed executive producer of Four Corners, replacing the program’s outgoing boss Matthew Carney.
An ABC insider told Diary: “If she wants it, it will be hers.”
But an ABC spokeswoman insisted no appointment had been made, stating that “an interview process will be undertaken in coming weeks”.
Cousin It
Meanwhile, Diary hears that the gender wars inside the ABC remain a live issue.
A recent report on ABC News noted that Hugo the Galapagos tortoise, who resides at the Australian Reptile Park near Gosford on the NSW Central Coast, had recently celebrated his 75th birthday.
Hooray for Hugo!
But it wasn’t all cakes and candles inside the ABC newsroom, as a lively discussion took place as to what Hugo’s pronouns should be.
You’d think they would have gone with he/him, because, well, he is a male. But you’d be wrong.
Poor old Hugo was referred to as “It” – much to the befuddlement of some in the newsroom.
Surely, the ABC can bring itself to correctly identify the known gender of an animal, at least in instances where the creature’s sex has been verified?
An ABC spokeswoman set us straight: “The style is that generally animals take the pronoun ‘it’.
“Exceptions include named animals such as race horses, or stories where an animal’s sex is relevant.”
For those wondering, Hugo’s birthday cake was made of watermelon, rockmelon and strawberries.
And according to the ABC story, “it” weighs 177 kilograms – Hugo that is, not the birthday cake.
Sorry for the confusion.
Hitting the headlines
The presence of neo-Nazis on our streets has been a hot topic of late.
It’s fair to say that the overwhelming majority of Australians find the bile spewed out by these cretins to be reprehensible, and the group’s repugnance has been well highlighted by most major news outlets in recent days.
But this headline on the ABC News website struck Diary as somewhat tone-deaf: “Neo-Nazi figure could miss child’s birth after bail denied over alleged threat.”
The figure is neo-NaziJoel Davis, who is accused of using a carriage service to encourage hate towards a federal MP.
Specifically, Mr Davis invited members of a group chat to “rhetorically rape” federal independent Wentworth MP Allegra Spender after she spoke against a Sydney rally he spoke at.
We’re not sure the delicate family situation of the neo-Nazi is the best angle.
Cantor’s drive by
Queensland TV presenter Liz Cantor – better known to many as the winner of the reality show The Mole about 20 years ago – might want to brush up on the road rules.
Last week, Cantor – who presents the weather on Channel 10 Queensland’s weeknight news bulletin, and also appears on Seven’s weekend lifestyle programs Creek to Coast and Weekender – found herself on the scene of a nasty accident, where a young boy had come off his e-bike.
Driving past the scene of the incident, Cantor, or someone in her car, appeared to film a video of the aftermath of the incident from the vantage point of the driver’s seat.
“Just another day, another kid on an e-bike … hit,” an exasperated Cantor was heard to say on the clip as her car cruised past the scene.
The video was posted to Instagram last Wednesday before it was deleted.
Cantor, who is sponsored by Isuzu, couldn’t be reached for comment.
A spokesman for Channel 10 declined to comment, while Channel 7’s crack team didn’t respond to questions.
Happy as Larry, Kylie
The merger between Seven West Media and Southern Cross Austereo is pretty much a done deal, with just a few minor formalities to be resolved before the new $420m combined entity becomes a reality in February next year.
When that day dawns, media mogul Kerry Stokes will step down as chair of SWM to make way for SCA chairman Heith Mackay-Cruise, who will oversee the whole shebang.
With that in mind, we asked Mackay-Cruise to put his TV hat on and disclose his favourite show on Seven.
Surely the flagship 6pm news bulletin? Or maybe current affairs powerhouse Spotlight? Or does he unwind with a bit of Home and Away?
“I’m probably gonna go with The Morning Show, with Larry (Emdur) and Kylie (Gillies),” Mackay-Cruise confessed.
Given that the show runs from 9am to noon on weekdays, Diary was somewhat taken aback.
“Really, you have time to watch that?” we asked HMC.
“I do have time. I always make time,” he countered.
With expected “cost synergies” of $25m-30m – code for “job losses” – under the new merger, there will be many at Seven looking over their shoulder next year.
But Larry and Kylie clearly need not worry!
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