Make-or-break for ABC boss; ‘slap-up party’ to send off Ben Hills; Rebel’s pay cut

Michelle Guthrie prepares to deliver the speech of her life; fallout from the Liberal Party federal council ABC sell-off plan and Rebel Wilson’s pay cut.

Cartoon: Johannes Leak.

The wake for Ben Hills, who died last Sunday, will be held at 1pm this Friday at Drummoyne Sailing Club in Sydney. The club was a favourite of Hills, the distinguished investigative reporter who worked for Fairfax and 60 Minutes. There will be no service, religious or otherwise. “He wants a slap-up party,” says friend Ian Verrender, who wrote an obituary of Hills that ran in The Sydney Morning Herald on Friday. Hills’s death from cancer has left his ambitious plans for a journalism bequest in limbo. He had been in the middle of talks with the Walkley Foundation and Melbourne Press Club, among others, to establish an investigative journalism award in his name. The prize, decided by a jury, would be awarded each year to an investigative reporter, who could only win once. Hills’s ambition was to make the award the richest in Australia, more lucrative than the $25,000 Coca-Cola Journalist of the Year Award at the NSW Kennedy Awards. Verrender, the ABC business editor, wrote that Hills “was a contradiction; a complex dilemma of a human being, oscillating between irascible, opinionated and cantankerous to erudite, funny, warm and, occasionally, incredibly generous”. During his career Hills covered the Wittenoom asbestos disaster, won a Walkley for exposing a $70 million sting on the Swiss Banking Corporation in an investigation that spanned three continents, probed Victoria’s Tri­continental Bank, leading to its collapse, worked as a producer for 60 Minutes, and was Fairfax’s Japan correspondent in the 1990s. He did not shy away from ­exposing others’ sloppy journalism — even if the culprit was a Fairfax colleague. In 2005, he forensically took apart of Paul ­Sheehan’s Good Weekend magazine cover story about a “miracle water” that was claimed to cure autoimmune disease. Hills exposed the fabrications by the story’s main source.

Celebrated reporter Ben Hills.

Guthrie’s big moment

Tuesday is make-or-break time for ABC managing director Michelle Guthrie. Unless she delivers the speech of her life at the Melbourne Press Club and strongly rejects government and media attacks on the ABC, the staff are likely to turn on her and revolt. Last week Melbourne ABC radio announcer Jon Faine issued a call to arms and criticised management, which can’t have helped ABC executives. After 22 years in the morning slot, Faine is virtually alone in having resisted the push to combine breakfast and morning slots across ABC metropolitan radio. He is 61 and might be contemplating going out all guns blazing. At this stage he has been more effective an advocate than Guthrie. Staff such as Faine have waited patiently over the past two years while Guthrie has caused maximum upheaval with her reform agenda, but it appears to have cut little ice with the federal government, which is pursuing multiple inquiries into the ABC and has frozen its funding. Nor with the Liberal Party, whose federal council voted overwhelmingly on the weekend to privatise the national broadcaster, with no dissenting voices. It is quite a week to farewell ABC general manager corporate affairs Nick Leys, who leaves the ABC on Wednesday for the Energy Council. Leys, who is married to Four Corners reporter Louise Milligan, is a former editor of this column and media editor of this paper, for about two weeks, before he jumped ship to the ABC almost five years ago, so he has looked at life from both sides now. To remind him what he will be missing each and every Sunday, Diary publishes an exclusive photo of the great man being pursued by a member of The Australian’s media team.

Nick Leys.

Big wheel keeps turnin’

Campbell Reid, the group executive — corporate affairs, policy and government relations for News Corp, Foxtel and Fox Sports — is recovering at home after a nasty cycling accident. Reid was cycling in the Centennial Park area a few weeks ago when he came off his bike and injured his back. He is recovering well and expected to be on deck in a week or so.

Blake plot thickens

Seven’s Doctor Blake telemovie will be called The Blake Mysteries: Ghost Stories, dropping the Dr while suspended star Craig McLachlan sues the ABC and Fairfax Media over sexual misconduct allegations he has vehemently denied. After the drama was axed by the ABC in an unrelated move, Seven commissioned a series of 90-minute telemovies, the first of which focuses on Dr Blake’s housekeeper, Jean Beazley, played by Nadine Garner. While McLachlan continues his defamation court battle, one source tells Diary that Dr Blake has been carefully, but temporarily, written out of the script, with the character tumbling from a bridge to an uncertain fate — thus leaving the door open for a potential return in the next instalment if the series rates well and MacLachlan is vindicated in court. The program is due to screen towards the end of the year.

Rebel yell

The Victorian Court of Appeal slashes actress Rebel Wilson’s defamation payout from Bauer Media from a record-breaking $4.6m to $600,000 and no one is happy. Wilson says the decision is unreasonable and vows to challenge it, while media companies are worried because the court appears to have blown up the statutory cap on the amount awarded for general or non-economic damages ($389,500 in Victoria). The appeal court reduced Wilson’s general damages award from $650,000 to $600,000, including aggravated damages, but didn’t enforce the cap. It in effect agreed with the Supreme Court that the cap does not apply when aggravated damages are awarded, which happens in a lot of cases. Now media companies are worried that the entire shape of ­defamation litigation has changed, because without the cap, the worst-case scenarios for most media companies just got a whole lot worse. If either party appeals, media companies might seek leave to join the dispute as interested parties.

Actress Rebel Wilson.

Beware the Auntyscare

How stupid. Does anyone, beyond the Liberal Party federal council, want to privatise the ABC? The commercial media will hate the idea. They are already complaining to a government inquiry about the ABC and SBS’s power in the commercial market. And if a privatised ABC doesn’t survive via advertising revenue, of which there is not enough to sustain three commercial networks and SBS, it would have to charge a subscription and compete against Foxtel and Stan. Already the government has run a million miles from the idea, knowing that the proposal gifts Labor the perfect excuse to launch the mother of all scare campaigns at the next election. Auntyscare will replace ­Mediscare. And remember, ABC viewers, many of whom live in the Liberal heartland, hate the idea of ads on Aunty.

Mad about clicks

The Saturday Paper is on the rise. The latest EMMA readership figures from a few weeks ago showed that Morry Schwartz’s four-year-old left-leaning weekly is growing strongly, with print readership soaring 26.7 per cent to 242,000. Is this affecting Fairfax? In contrast, The Age was up only 1.1 per cent to 556,000 at the weekend but the Saturday edition of The Sydney Morning Herald plunged 8.8 per cent to 643,000. Last week, Saturday Paper editor turned editor-in-chief Eric Jensen appointed as editor Maddison Connaughton, features editor at Vice and a 2018 Walkley Young Australian Journalist finalist, for reporting on the Syrian border.

The Saturday Paper's new editor Maddison Connaughton with founding editor Erik Jensen, who has been promoted to editor-in-chief.

It will be interesting to see how Connaughton’s digital smarts translate into a weekly print product, but her appointment suggests Jensen will still firmly be in the ­editor’s chair and wants complementary talents.

Connaughton said in the release: “I’m so excited and, honestly, humbled to step into this role and build on all the incredible work Erik has done. I see this as an opportunity to find new audiences for the paper and to foster a whole new generation of writers who think deeply, and differently, about the shifts that are reshaping Australia and our region.”

But her interview on Nevena Spirovska’s feminist podcast Quickie was much more entertaining and revealing. “Social first publishing hasn’t really hit here yet but I want it to,” Connaughton said, talking about what would be her second real full-time job after Vice. When asked what it would take to make a name for themselves at Vice, Connaughton’s throwaway response was “Take acid”. One answer, however, was bang on target. She revealed that her fun fact was that she got into the final round of auditions with MasterChef. “I made vegan ramen. They said it was incredible.” Diary particularly liked her first suggestion for her epitaph: “She died for clicks.” A sentiment unlikely to make it on to the masthead of The Saturday Paper.

Run for high office

Diary well remembers an episode of Kitchen Cabinet in which Foreign Minister and deputy Liberal leader Julie Bishop playfully revealed her morning fitness regimen in Canberra involved jogging into Parliament House and delivering any passing MPs travelling at a slower velocity a playful slap on the bottom while transiting. Daybreak on Sydney Harbour last week and Diary’s man on the spot spied the Foreign Minister jogging along Mrs Macquarie’s Chair accompanied by two men. The physique of one suggested he was security, or possibly a personal trainer, but what was the other man doing? Why, managing Bishop’s Instagram account. Justin Trudeau, eat your heart out!

Julie Bishop.

Cricket scoop? Nein!

You would think that Channel 9, having held the cricket rights for four decades before losing them earlier this year, would understand how they work. Last week Nine’s Wide World of Sports went Weird World of Sports by publishing a yarn claiming that the ABC was about to lose the radio cricket rights to commercial operators Crocmedia, which owns Melbourne’s SEN, and Macquarie Media, which owns 3AW and 2GB. “Sources close to the bidding process have confirmed to Wide World of Sports the plans to exclude the ABC are ‘more than a ­rumour’ and ‘well advanced’.”

Well, no. On Friday Cricket Australia’s outgoing chief executive, James Sutherland, said the report was “mischievous and incorrect” and then announced that the ABC would share the rights with Macquarie and Crocmedia. The ABC will cover men’s and women’s internationals and the Women’s Big Bash League across a mix of digital and AM/FM channels. Macquarie will cover women’s internationals, men’s internationals and the BBL, while Crocmedia will broadcast BBL matches plus men’s Tests. Presumably Nine, holder of the TV rights for decades, knew that the radio rights were non-exclusive? Or if it didn’t, the article looks a bit like sour grapes from a company that lost the TV rights spectacularly this year to Seven and Foxtel.

Ten team rolls on

Back in March, Diary was sharing a drink with CBS’s Los Angeles executive vice-president communications Chris Ender, visiting for the Melbourne Formula One. He was being hosted by Neil Shoebridge, director of corporate and public communications at Network Ten, CBS’s acquisition, and Shoebridge’s offsider Andrew Knowles. Now, Shoebridge, a former media editor at The Australian Financial Review, has set up his own comms shop, retaining Ten as a client and adding APN Outdoor, where ex-Ten boss James Warburton is chief executive. The Shoe, who left Ten last month, has taken Knowles with him and launched Shoebridge Knowles Media Group, SKMG. New clients announced today are: fashion label DearFriend & Co, music and entertainment business Paxx Group, musician Yahtzel and record label and event brand Conspiracy.

Neil Shoebridge and Andrew Knowles.