Crikey is an Australian electronic magazine comprising a website and email newsletter available to subscribers. Crikey was described by the former Federal Opposition Leader
Mark Latham as the "most popular website in Parliament House" in ''
The Latham Diaries
''The Latham Diaries'' () is a political memoir by the former Federal Parliamentary Australian Labor Party (ALP) leader, Mark Latham. The book, published in 2005 by Melbourne University Press, attracted a great amount of criticism. Much of the ...
''. In 2014 it had around 17,000 paying subscribers.
History
Stephen Mayne
Crikey was founded by the
activist shareholder Stephen Mayne, a journalist and former staffer of then
Liberal Victorian premier
The premier of Victoria is the head of government in the Australian state of Victoria. The premier is appointed by the governor of Victoria, and is the leader of the political party able to secure a majority in the Victorian Legislative Assembly ...
Jeff Kennett
Jeffrey Gibb Kennett (born 2 March 1948) is a former Australian politician who was the 43rd Premier of Victoria between 1992 and 1999, and currently a media commentator. He was previously the president of the Hawthorn Football Club, servi ...
. It developed out of Mayne's "jeffed.com" website, which in turn developed out of his aborted independent candidate campaign for Kennett's seat of
Burwood. Longstanding Crikey political commentators/reporters have included the former Liberal insider
Christian Kerr (who originally wrote under the pseudonym
"Hillary Bray"),
, Charles Richardson,
Bernard Keane,
Mungo MacCallum and Hugo Kelly.
In 2003, Mayne was forced to sell his house to settle defamation cases brought by the radio presenter
Steve Price and the former
ALP senator
A senate is a deliberative assembly, often the upper house or chamber of a bicameral legislature. The name comes from the ancient Roman Senate (Latin: ''Senatus''), so-called as an assembly of the senior (Latin: ''senex'' meaning "the e ...
Nick Bolkus over false statements published about them by Crikey.
Staff of
Treasurer
A treasurer is the person responsible for running the treasury of an organization. The significant core functions of a corporate treasurer include cash and liquidity management, risk management, and corporate finance.
Government
The treasury o ...
Peter Costello banned Crikey from the 2005, 2006 and 2007 budget 'lock ups' in which financial journalists are shown the federal budget papers some hours in advance so that their publications can report the budget in depth as soon as it is released. The grounds were that Crikey was not considered to be part of the "
mainstream media
In journalism, mainstream media (MSM) is a term and abbreviation used to refer collectively to the various large mass news media that influence many people and both reflect and shape prevailing currents of thought. Chomsky, Noam, ''"What makes ma ...
".
Private Media Partners
On 1 February 2005, it was announced that Stephen Mayne had sold Crikey to
Private Media Partners, a company owned by the former editor-in-chief of ''
The Sydney Morning Herald
''The Sydney Morning Herald'' (''SMH'') is a daily compact newspaper published in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia, and owned by Nine. Founded in 1831 as the ''Sydney Herald'', the ''Herald'' is the oldest continuously published newspaper ...
'',
Eric Beecher, for
A$1 million. Under the agreement, Mayne has occasionally written for the email newsletter.
Under Private Media Partners' stewardship, the publication had aimed for a more "professional" style by avoiding the use of in-house nicknames and other idiosyncrasies of the original Crikey. In February 2006,
''The'' ''Age'' reported that a co-founder and writer, Hugo Kelly, had been sacked on the grounds of professional misconduct, but Kelly maintained that Crikey had folded to political pressure and it had "no guts".
In 2022, following a war of words in which Crikey invited media proprietor
Lachlan Murdoch to sue, Lachlan Murdoch commenced defamation action against Crikey for an article by
Bernard Keane that suggested that "Murdoch" was an “unindicted co-conspirator” in the
January 6 United States Capitol attack
On January 6, 2021, following the defeat of then-United States President, U.S. President Donald Trump in the 2020 United States presidential election, 2020 presidential election, a mob of his supporters attacked the United States Capitol, U ...
.
See also
*
Daily Review (website)
*
Journalism in Australia
References
External links
*{{Official website, http://www.crikey.com.au/
Australian political websites
Australian news websites