Bloodbath in magland as top editors at New Idea and TV Week are axed. Plus, staffers reveal the open secret at radio company SCA and a Channel Seven star vanishes into thin air: INSIDE MAIL

In our must-read Mail+ column, Steve Jackson and Peter van Onselen reveal what’s REALLY going on in the worlds of media and politics each week.

Top editors axed in brutal magland purge

There’s nothing our national tabloid magazines like peddling more than a little gossip – except when it comes to what’s really going on in their own newsrooms. 

So it’s just as well we’re here to do it for them. 

Inside Mail can reveal it’s been an absolute bloodbath over at Are Media’s Park Street headquarters this week, with four of the company’s most senior editors getting the chop.

New Idea editor Karleigh Smith, TV Week editor-in-chief Stephen Downie, Who Weekly associate editor Naomi Toy and Elizabeth Barry, the digital managing editor for Woman’s Day, New Idea and TV Week, were all made redundant.

Woman’s Day editor Katherine Chatfield managed to survive the purge, which is just as well given she was only appointed to the role last month. 

Our insiders say the cull came as ‘a bolt from the blue’ and has sent shockwaves through the cash-strapped company. 

Responsibility for editing the magazines will now fall to Are’s well-remunerated ‘editorial directors’, we are told. 

‘It was brutal – they were each called into a series of individual meetings on Tuesday morning and told their services were no longer required,’ one senior staffer tells us.

‘None of them saw it coming – and everyone else is in shock because they were the most experienced, committed and well-liked journalists in the company. Now we’re all fearing who will be next.’

The latest redundancies come off the back of repeated rounds of job cuts within the ailing media outfit, with insiders now predicting top brass are priming the business for sale. 

‘The budgets just keep getting slashed – and, look, the company is still profitable… it will just look a lot more profitable once they get rid of everyone on more than $110,000 a year,’ another staffer says.

The brutal top-tier redundos also come just months after Are Media chief Jane Huxley admitted the mass-market glossies were no longer the magland money spinners they once were in their former life as the late Kerry Packer‘s ACP print division. 

‘Segments of the market are growing, but obviously the mass-market titles are not,’ she told The Australian two months ago. 

‘Stabilising is a better word for those, but there are certainly spots in the market that we do see growth in. If I look first at our own stable, we are seeing very steady growth in the luxury market.’

Yikes! Things don’t seem so stable when having an editor is considered a luxury.

Not to fear… the company assures us the axings, which caught everyone off guard, were actually part of a well-planned, three-year strategy… while repeatedly referring to themselves as an ‘omnichannel’ – whatever the heck that means. 

‘Are Media has made a small number of staff changes. The changes are part of the ongoing transformation of Are Media, Australia’s leading omnichannel content company for women,’ a spokesman said. 

‘All our brands now have omnichannel leadership, with their teams responsible for creating content for print, digital, eDM and social channels – aligning our structure with our strategy.

‘Delivering on our plan has seen the creation of new and different roles and reporting line changes. However, unfortunately some roles no longer align with our future structure.

‘The small number of people affected by these changes leave Are Media with our sincere thanks and our very best wishes for the future.’

Sounds more like an omnishambles. At least the axed eds will be relieved to know they leave with their former paymaster’s sincere thanks. That’ll help pay the bills.

Misery at SCA

Speaking of bad times in media land, we hear morale is at an all-time low over at Southern Cross Austereo, despite radio duo Carrie Bickmore and Tommy Little ‘keeping things light in the afternoons’.

SCA is described as the largest radio broadcaster in Australia, which it may well be. But not if it keeps making its staff redundant at a rate of knots.

The gripe amongst those spared from the chop is that they are now being expected to take up the slack of their dearly departed with little sympathy from management for the strain the extra workload presents.

They also claim SCA management is using the nine-day working fortnight (a common practice at the company) as an excuse to not give out any pay rises this year.

‘It’s kind of an open secret that you get this “bonus” of working four days every other week – but then you don’t get a pay rise. Honestly, most of us would rather work five days a week and get paid better,’ a source tells us. 

Greens cheerleader and LiSTNR podcast star Abbie Chatfield is apparently looking for a producer and a listing for that job is spruiking the nine-day fortnight as a perk.

One manager in sales recently told a junior sales associate (who has taken on a bigger workload since all the redundancies) that the nine-day fortnight is a ‘privilege not a right’.

The ‘Boele cut’ that backfired

Teal candidate Nicolette Boele was having her hair washed last week at the Envy Room salon, just metres from her campaign office in Gordon, when she made an off-colour remark to a 19-year-old female hairdresser.

‘That was amazing – and I didn’t even have sex with you,’ Ms Boele allegedly said.

After 2GB broke the bizarre story, an employee at the salon told Daily Mail Australia that Ms Boele had been banned ‘indefinitely’.

‘She [the staff member] was in shock and quite upset afterwards,’ they added.

‘We wrote to her [Ms Boele] last week to tell her that we will no longer have her here.’

Ms Boele admitted it was a ‘poor attempt at humour and I’ve apologised’.

‘Everyone deserves to feel respected in their workplace and I will do better,’ she said, no doubt hoping the embarrassing episode would end there.

But it has now emerged that someone in Ms Boele’s office has been on a comment-deleting spree after people claiming to work at the salon suggested there was more to the story.

‘I was there when she said it [and] I can confirm it was very weird and uncomfortable,’ a woman, who Inside Mail has verified works at the salon, wrote beneath one of Ms Boele’s Instagram posts.

‘You don’t moan when getting your hair done and you don’t say what she said.’

Moaning? Now that is the kind of detail we are fascinated by at Inside Mail.

But the comment was swiftly deleted and neither the salon staff member nor Ms Boele wanted to answer our questions.

Now that is something to moan about…

Journo’s citizen’s arrest no April fools 

One minute, The Age’s Nick McKenzie is embroiled in a secret tape scandal that threatens (depending on who you believe) to have serious implications on Ben Roberts-Smith‘s failed defamation case against the Melbourne newssheet and its sister outlets, the Sydney Morning Herald and Nine Network.

The next, he’s saving a defenceless motorist from a ‘chair-wielding assailant’ on the mean streets of Brunswick. 

Seriously. It may have been reported on April 1 – but we’re assured this wasn’t a joke. What a world we live in!

Turns out, just hours after Roberts-Smith’s lawyers were railing against McKenzie in the Federal Court on Monday, the mild-mannered reporter was giving Clark Kent a run for his money and saving unsuspecting citizens in the heart of Melbourne.

Crikey scribe Daanyal Saeed revealed the Nine journo rescued the motorist ‘in a spontaneous act of good Samaritanism’ after a blue-tracksuit-clad pedestrian ‘grabbed a chair from a nearby Thai restaurant’ and stalked the driver’s Lexus SUV down Sydney Road following a brief verbal row at about 2.50pm.

‘McKenzie sprung into action and sprinted empty-handed towards the man wielding the chair to try to deescalate the situation,’ Saeed gushed breathlessly.

‘With the man now brandishing the chair above his head and moving quickly towards the car, McKenzie restrained him to protestations of, “Don’t fucking touch me, c***.”

‘As he did so, the Lexus driver got out of the vehicle to express his own anger at the interaction.

‘McKenzie, still restraining the chair-wielding man, simultaneously kept the pair apart and prevented a physical altercation from breaking out for approximately two minutes until police arrived.’

Be still our beating hearts – it seems heroes do walk amongst us.

But how did Saeed know all this?

Well, Inside Mail can reveal it’s because he was actually there.

That’s right – the news blogger had been walking down Sydney Road with McKenzie when it all played out.

Just goes to show, the truth is often stranger than fiction.

Just give us a Reason 

Where in the world is Chris Reason?

It’s a question that used to elicit a response almost as exciting as the action-packed news stories he would file for Seven’s prime-time bulletins.

After all, Reaso – as the veteran news hound is known in the industry – could be dodging missiles on the frontline of the Israel-Gaza War one day and chasing a paedo priest around the Outback the next.

In fact, he collected Walkleys for his work on both those stories just last year alone.

But since Seven replaced its long-serving leadership team with its current ‘news in nappies’ line-up of child bosses almost a year ago, Reaso has become increasingly difficult to spot at 6pm.

He’s still there, of course, but these days it can be like trying to find the titular character in a Where’s Wally book.

Although the hard-boiled – and hard-working – journo is still the network’s national correspondent, there has been growing disquiet within Seven’s upper echelons that their main man is being overlooked for key assignments in favour of news boss Anthony De Ceglie‘s new on-air playthings.

The issue is, Reason isn’t just Seven’s most decorated reporter – he’s also its highest paid – and a favourite of the big boss.

We hear Seven West Media chair Kerry Stokes personally intervened and signed off on Reason’s $360,000 salary a decade ago after Nine tried to woo him to 60 Minutes.

Sixty ultimately signed Reason’s Seven stablemate, then Sunday Night reporter Ross Coulthart, after their initial entreaties were rebuffed.

Indeed, Stokes is said to be such a Reaso fan, the media-savvy billionaire has been known to call the reporter directly for updates on key news stories.

And the whisper around Seven is the media magnate is none too pleased to see his swashbuckling star play second fiddle to De Ceglie’s prized kids’ club.

Of course, none of this is Reason’s fault. For the record, he’s genuinely a brilliant journo and an even better bloke. 

Still, we reached out to him and asked why he thought he was getting the newsroom run-around in at Seven.

But it turns out, even though he has filed from war zones around the globe, he reckons it’s ‘too dangerous’ to talk to us. 

Stay tuned for more on this front. 

‘BBQ chook network’ loses its fire

Speaking of Stokes, it’s been all hands on deck this week at Seven’s Media City headquarters in Sydney’s inner-south as the media boss spends a fortnight working out of his rarely used Harbour City office.

Although the tycoon owes the vast majority of his multibillion-dollar net worth to his construction, mining and property interests, his first love is the media and its players – and even at 84, he doesn’t miss a trick.

Indeed, Mr Stokes – as he is known even at the company’s highest levels – is intimately familiar with every program that airs on the Seven Network – along with their budget, ratings and revenue breakdowns. (We told you he was sharp).

Stokes’ latest Media City residency comes a matter of months after he gave a selection of top Seven staffers, including chief exec Jeff Howard, newsreaders Mark Ferguson and Angela Cox, Spotlight star Liam Bartlett, and reporters Michael Usher and Reason, a little frank feedback at a now-infamous private lunch he hosted with wife Christine at his Darling Point mansion.

After labelling 2024 a ‘s*** year’ for the network, he openly praised recently departed news and current affairs boss Craig McPherson as the ‘best’ Seven had ever had – ‘better even than (Peter) Meakin‘ – which, as regular readers will know, is really saying something.

Oh, and did we mention this was all in front of McPherson’s rookie replacement, Anthony De Ceglie? Awkward.

So, how are things faring since McPherson left? Well, if we’re honest, not great.

Nine News is now winning outright along the eastern seaboard after establishing a tight grip on Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane – and is making massive inroads in Seven’s traditional Perth and Adelaide strongholds. 

Indeed, Nine News’ audience is up 15.3 per cent year-on-year in the South Australian capital while Seven News has dropped 4.6 per cent in the same time frame.  

And in Perth, Seven West Media’s centre of power, Nine News is up a whopping 16.7 per cent and even winning the odd outing – an almost unforgivable offence under the Stokes regime. 

Worst yet, insiders say Seven News has started to lose its loyal following in south-west Sydney, one of the biggest and most important ratings regions in the country. 

‘We used to pride ourselves on being the “BBQ chook channel” – because we were the ones in touch with your average family having a BBQ chicken for dinner while watching the news that was important to them on Seven,’ one insider says. 

‘All that’s slipping away now, between star signs and comedy skits and pets of the week – all the chopping and changing is alienating the rusted-on viewers, and once you lose them, it’s hard to get them back.’

And while Nine isn’t breaking out the bubbles just yet, they certainly have it on ice.

‘The five-city metro is very tight… but 9News has pulled ahead in recent weeks. We’ll soon overtake 7News and, if the current trend continues, we should win the year,’ a network spokesperson tells us. 

Of course, De Ceglie’s transition from prince of print in Perth to a TV news supremo is not an easy one. Many have tried and failed to make the transition. 

Garry Linnell lasted just 14 months as Nine’s news and current affairs director after switching from a print role as editor-in-chief of the now-defunct The Bulletin magazine in 2006. 

Neil Breen lasted 12 months as Today show executive producer after leaving his gig as The Sunday Telegraph’s editor in 2012 – though he has since established himself as one of the network’s best reporters across News and A Current Affair. 

And Simon Pristel served four years as Seven’s Melbourne news director after coming aboard in 2014 after a successful stint editing the Herald-Sun. 

How De Ceglie will compare to those tallies remains to be seen… but he racks up 12 months in the hot seat this month, having been promoted from the editor’s gig at The West Australian last April.

Sonia Kruger’s blockbuster reno

As for McPherson, it looks like he’s about to be back on the tools – quite literally.

After hammering Nine in the ratings for the better part of a decade, the former news boss is soon going to have his hands full with a major construction project.

McPherson and his Gold Logie-winning wife Sonia Kruger have just dropped $16.1million on a knock-down Mosman mansion with incredible views on Sydney’s prized Balmoral Slopes.

The purchase comes just two weeks after the media power couple sold their former home – believe it or not, a Mosman mansion with incredible views on Sydney’s prized Balmoral Slopes – just a couple of blocks away for about $20million.

They picked up that property for $6.5million nine years ago before giving it a complete overhaul – and look set to do it all again. 

We reached out to McPherson to see what he had planned for his new block but he was already too busy drawing up blueprints for his new home to give us a rundown.

Liberal junk mail 

The Liberal Party’s strategy to claw back support in previously safe seats now held by teal independents is taking shape.

The pitch is that despite a low Greens vote in teal seats, the first-term MPs have overwhelmingly sided with the Greens since arriving in Canberra.

Your political observer, Peter van Onselen, happens to live in Allegra Spender‘s seat and found this leaflet stuffed in his letterbox.

(Never mind, by the way, that right above said letterbox sits a politely worded sign requesting ‘no junk mail please’.)

‘Last election, only eight per cent of Wentworth voted for the Greens,’ the flier points out. ‘Since then, Allegra Spender has voted with the Greens 66 per cent of the time.’

Perhaps the Liberal volunteer stuffing fliers in letterboxes was so delighted with its message they didn’t think of it as junk.

At any rate, we hear that variations of this flier have been distributed in other teal seats across Sydney, with plans to do the same in Melbourne and Perth.

It’s a generic brochure that can easily be tailored to individual seats. Just pop in the slightly different percentages that apply seat by seat alongside the headshot of the local teal MP and away you go!

‘That’s just what Queenslanders do’ 

Brisbane’s Olympic Games are still more than seven years away but there’s already been plenty of gold about, at least when it comes to prize-winning slip-ups.

The premier of the self-proclaimed ‘smart state’, David Crisafulli, last week unveiled the Games’ upcoming venues at The Courier Mail’s annual Future Brisbane gabfest before presenting a video extolling the virtues of ‘what it means to be a Queenslander’.

About 30 seconds into the fiercely parochial clip, an elderly woman is seen being rescued from rising floodwaters as narrator Rupert McCall intones, ‘When our back’s against the wall, we turn up for our mates – that’s just what Queenslanders do.’

Stirring stuff indeed, as Seven News was soon stirring them about the fact the vision had nothing to do with Queensland… it was actually shot in Lismore, in northern NSW, during the 2022 floods.

But Inside Mail hears that’s not the only clip slip that has had people talking.

Just seconds later in the promo package, which remains online on Crisafulli’s Facebook page, Brisbane’s second most successful female Olympic swim star Susie O’Neill (her tally is topped only by fellow River City legend Emma McKeon) can be seen celebrating victory in the pool.

Yet despite her proud place in the city’s sporting annals, Madame Butterfly’s invite to the shindig must have got lost in the mail, because she didn’t make the guest list.

Our sources tell us O’Neill was surprised she failed to score an invite to the Olympic luncheon. However, she has taken the snub in the typical graceful style that saw her collect four Olympic medals and issued nary a word of complaint.

Now, that’s what it means to be a true Queenslander!

Listen to the experts 

Who do you believe when a politician and the Governor of the Reserve Bank of Australia disagree on a matter of economic importance?

On Tuesday, the RBA left interest rates on hold, also warning that productivity growth is hopelessly non-existent.

That same day, employment minister Murray Watt was defending Labor’s election promise to push for a wage rise higher than inflation for Australia’s three million lowest-paid workers.

Whether such an increase is prudent or not, it’s sure to buy Labor some votes.

Defending a real wage rise when productivity is weak, Watt declared: ‘I don’t think it’s correct to say you can’t have real wage growth without stronger productivity growth.’

Somebody needs to tell Michele Bullock that because, on the very same day, she declared: ‘If productivity doesn’t pick up, the rate of nominal wage growth that can be sustained is lower.’

Between all the economic jargon, what she was basically saying was: ‘Murray, you have no idea what you’re talking about’.

Here at Inside Mail we assumed that, like most Labor ministers, Murray lacks an economics qualification to speak of, but his parliamentary biography lists a Bachelor of Communications degree next to his name.

While Watt may well have majored in marketing, there must be compulsory economics subjects within that degree surely?

At any rate, we’ll take the vastly more experienced and economically literate Bullock’s assessment over that of Watt.’

Especially given that her postgraduate studies at the London School of Economics included evaluating the role of productivity in national economies.

Inside Mail dines on humble pie

Crack out the crayons, reach for the bright red and colour us embarrassed.

Earlier this year, we pontificated about the network television race to lock in live, on-air debates between Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and Opposition leader Peter Dutton in the lead-up to the federal election.

‘Last time,’ we noted, ‘Sky News scooped the pool and, in something of a coup, secured the first contest, followed by Nine and Seven, while the ABC and Ten were overlooked.

‘This time, we’re hearing the People’s Albo might not be quite so talkative and the six broadcasters could all be left slugging it out to secure just the one debate.

‘Spoiler alert: We hear Sky News is unlikely to be in the running.’

So imagine our blushes when the Sky News dark horse came hurtling through the pack and yet again snagged the first debate for the federal election.

Yes, that’s right, Sky News this week revealed their respected chief news anchor Kieran Gilbert will host the leaders’ first face-off next week as Albo and Dutton answer 100 unscripted questions from undecided voters live from western Sydney.

Now, if we were ones to quibble, we would note we said they were only ‘unlikely’ to be in the running… but quibble we not.

Instead, we tucked in to some humble pie and flicked Sky News’ programming chief Mark Calvert an apology for pre-emptively ruling his team out of contention.

And he seems to have forgiven us for our lack of faith… though, only after helping us to another serve!

‘We were always very confident of securing the first debate of the campaign, but we became super confident once PVO predicted it wouldn’t happen,’ a Sky News insider told us when we asked whether Calvert had accepted our pleas for a pardon.

Yeah, yeah, alright, we deserved that.

But seriously, it’s great get by Sky News boss Paul Whittaker, Calvert and the team.

We’ll certainly be tuning in when the debate hits the airwaves at 7.30pm on Tuesday.

Solo survivor of Lattouf bloodbath 

The ABC’s bombshell decision to sack freelance fill-in presenter Antoinette Lattouf three days into a five-day stretch hosting the public broadcaster’s Sydney morning radio show has certainly claimed more than a few casualties.

Aunty’s former chair Ita Buttrose, former managing director David Anderson, former content chief Chris Oliver-Taylor and former Sydney radio boss Steve Ahern have all had their reputations somewhat tarnished as Lattouf’s unfair dismissal claim worked its way through the Federal Court.

So we’re glad to see not everyone linked to the disastrous call has wound up as collateral damage.

Take Elizabeth Green, for example.

She’s the ABC radio manager who first approached Lattouf about the temporary hosting gig, ‘tried to stop them’ (i.e. management) from firing the presenter, and warned her there had been ‘pressure coming from higher up’ to sack her since her first day on air.

Not only that, in court last month, it was also revealed she was the one who cautioned Lattouf about ‘being mindful about posting on social media’ because the ABC had ‘strict editorial guidelines’ around the ‘perception of bias’.

‘I was doing what I was instructed to do, which was to tell [Lattouf] to keep a low profile on social media,’ she said.

The former ABC Radio Sydney content director and executive producer is now producing former Seven star Chris Bath‘s new drive time show for Aunty in the Harbour City.

And while Lattouf waits for Justice Darryl Rangiah to hand down his judgement on her claim, Bath and Green have been hard at work building a faithful following.

Indeed, the dynamic duo’s ratings were up half a percentage point in the first survey of the year last week, as they snagged 7.2 per cent of the available audience.

And they’ve only just begun.

The world’s most boring debate 

Hold onto your hats, everyone, because the debate nobody will want to miss is in the offing. Or at least it will be if shadow finance spokeswoman Jane Hume takes up finance minister Katy Gallagher‘s challenge for a debate about the public service in the nation’s capital.

Can you think of a less interesting way to lose an hour of your life? We can’t, but that doesn’t mean the ABC won’t air the showdown live and in full if it ever happens. It just means nobody will be watching.

Or will they? The hot topic is public service job cuts, which is an election promise Peter Dutton has made. He plans to slash more than 30,000 public service jobs, mostly in Canberra, arguing that the service is bloated.

Dutton is also railing against public servants being allowed to work from home, concerned that too many of them aren’t actually working. Or at least they aren’t working hard and productively enough.

Maybe all those layabout taxpayer-funded public servants will tune into a debate about them on the taxpayer-funded public broadcaster? If that’s not the ultimate circle jerk we don’t know what is. No wonder Hume is yet to take up the challenge.

More resignations at Holt St

Last week, we revealed three senior staffers had quit The Telegraph’s weekend news team: top-shelf journos Josh Whittington, chief of staff Lisa Wachsmuth and senior writer Cydonee Mardon. 

And this week? Well, we hear two more weekend Tele journos are tendering their resignations and heading for the door.

One is a lock… the other is still considering her options (or so we’re told).

With an exodus now rivalling that of the Guardian’s shattered Canberra bureau under Karen ‘Middle Management’ Middleton, the weekend Tele’s editor, Anna ‘Amazing’ Caldwell, could be forgiven if she suddenly stops talking to staff altogether for fear they might spontaneously quit.

Help wanted!

And finally… speaking of all things Guardian – it seems the news website’s Canberra bureau will remain rudderless for the duration of the federal election following Middleton’s shock-but-not-so-unexpected exit as political editor last month.

The Grauniad’s online-only Aussie operation is still advertising for potential replacements to approach them with an ‘expression of interest’ in the role.

The advert doesn’t give much away in terms of requirements for the ‘senior leadership position’ but notes applicants must be well-versed in ‘politics, the bureaucracy and academia’.

Whether they’re referring to their own newsroom politics and bureaucracy or that of federal government remains unclear.

Either way, the ‘expressions of interest’ close on April 30 – just three days out from the federal poll.  So far, only 14 plucky souls think they are up for challenge. Good luck.