Best of the Week: Hugh Marks finally screws up; and goodbye Mumbrella House

[View web version]( BEST OF THE WEEK And another thing... September 7, 2019 Welcome to Best of the Week, written in instalments in a pleasant bar in The Rocks, in a quiet corner at Mumbrella’s B2B Marketing Summit, on QF415 out of Sydney, waiting for Rex ZL3561 at Melbourne Airport and, finally, during a rainy Friday night at beautiful Sisters Beach, Tasmania, with The Ashes murmuring in the background. And, never again, in Mumbrella House. We’ve moved out. I’m a sentimentalist. Over the years I’ve been accompanied by the inch-high figurine of a bear clutching a tiny reporter’s notebook with the word “scoop” on it and a badge saying “press” tucked into his trilby. He’s been with me for three decades now. The little fella really does deserve a name at some point. And taking him off his Blu Tac plinth next to my desk this week felt like the end of a chapter. It’s been seven years in the same seat. I’m glad we followed the advice of Matthew Melhuish - then boss of BMF, now boss of Enero - that it was worth spending money on decent office chairs. The packing process uncovered a lot of memorabilia. Old Mumbrella360 programs (remember the days we used to print them?) Old copies of the Mumbrella Annual (remember the days we used to print them?) Old editions of the Mumbrella Creative Agency Guide (remember the days we used to print them?) The first version of the Mumbrella Awards trophy (it really was quite phallic, wasn’t it?) And also my old appointment diaries. (I see that the day back in December 2008 we actually launched Mumbrella was so unplanned it didn’t even make it into the diary. Apparently the only thing I was actually intending that day was to go to the Commercial Radio Australia Christmas drinks.) Actually this was our second office. The first Mumbrella House was round the corner in Chippendale, in a former coffee house which is now a 3D print shop. Naming a building isn’t as hard as you’d think. All you have to do is get a cheap plaque engraved and slap it up on the wall outside. We didn’t actually ask anybody’s permission. It seemed like an amusingly grandiose thing to do when there were just three or four of us. When it was time to move to the new Mumbrella House, we crowbarred the plaque off the wall and superglued it next to our new front door. It still seems slightly subversive to see Mumbrella House appear on Google Maps. And when the dozen or so of us moved into the new Mumbrella House in 2012, we optimistically wired the building for 22 desks. It seemed like plenty. But we quite quickly outgrew that. After squeezing in more desks, we eventually had to turn our lunch area into an office too. Then we had to turn the garage into an office (or, as the real estate agent recently put it, “a creative think tank”). Eventually the only place we hadn’t squeezed a desk was the corridor outside the toilets. Which was only because of the queue that used to build up there. Two toilets between nearly 40 people is NOT enough. Our one meeting room was constantly double booked. You’d find us walking laps of Chippendale’s Central Park instead. We won a few more months by exiling some of the team across the road to a friendly agency who rented us half a dozen desks. And then we sold the building. So it was time to say goodbye to Mumbrella House and hello to Diversified Towers. Nine’s culture clash Next year we’ll be moving in with our colleagues from our owner Diversified Communication, in a big new office space. And until that’s ready, for the next few weeks, we’ll be camping with our Diversified colleagues in their current office in Sydney’s CBD. After that, our permanent new home will probably be in North Sydney. If so, we’ll be on the doorstep of Nine’s new headquarters. They’re due to move into the suburb late next year. The Nine TV staff from Willoughby will be joined by the former Fairfax Media workers from Pyrmont. And it will be an interesting dynamic. Those AFR and SMH journos bumping into CEO Hugh Marks in the lift. Which brings me to one of the media stories of the week. It emerged - via the AFR - that on Monday of this week Marks hosted a fundraiser for the Liberal Party, on the Willoughby set of The Today Show. And, it also turned out, it wasn’t even the first time. Prior to its takeover of Fairfax Media, Nine had done a similar thing on the set of The Voice. It was a big misstep, and the biggest sign to date of a clash between the two cultures. I should mention, by the way, that one of the editorial challenges I’ve always felt with Mumbrella is to recognise that our own centre of gravity among readers is on the business side of media and marketing. We might be journos, but most of our readers are not. So as much as I can, I try to see things through the same commercial lens as our readers. But even through that lens, the Liberal fundraiser was a mistake that either misunderstands, or at the very least underestimates, that the central brand value of Nine’s news mastheads is independence. Independent. Always. That’s what it says on the masthead. And as most marketers would tell you, if you don’t live the brand, then the consumers will see through you. Nine’s newspapers often write about the grubbiness of political funding. This month has seen excellent coverage of the Independent Commission Against Corruption’s investigation into alleged unlawful donations at a Labor fundraiser. It’s hard to credibly write about that while organising a fundraising event for the other team. There is a case for the defence. James Chessell, group executive editor for Nine’s metro publishing operation, was the one who had to give it in a staff memo. Here it is in full: “Hi everyone, “The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age’s charter of editorial independence has been in place since 1998. The charter perfectly spells out and protects the job of recording ‘the affairs of the city, state, nation and the world fairly, fully and regardless of any commercial, political or personal interests, including those of any proprietors, shareholders or board members’. Its tenets are so well known to us in the newsroom that they are part of our professional DNA. “The charter makes Nine’s decision to host a Liberal party event on Monday irrelevant to the way we report the news. Decisions about what appears on our websites and in our newspapers are informed made on the editorial floor and nowhere else. “Our mastheads have always stuck to the job of informing, engaging and holding to powerful to account regardless of what goes on in the boardroom. And to be clear, nobody at Nine has attempted to influence editorial coverage since the merger in any way. Instead, management has allowed us to get on with our work and provided support when necessary which is as it should be. Overall the merger has been an extremely positive experience for the newsrooms. “But perception does matter, particularly when it comes to our relationship with subscribers, contacts and others who rely on our journalism. In this sense the Monday function was regrettable. I note the House Committee's statement from yesterday which reflects the views of many staff worried the event could temporarily tarnish our reputation for independence. We have already seen rival outlets attempt to capitalise on the story even when they have no evidence to support their allegations. “These concerns were conveyed by me to Nine chief executive Hugh Marks yesterday morning. He has responded by telling me it was a mistake to host the function. Hugh made the important point Nine’s primary motivation was to engage with the government on issues of importance to the newsrooms - such as press freedom and the ACCC’s inquiry into digital platforms - which is a valid argument for management to make. But he concedes it could have been handled better. “Our work speaks for itself. The best way to respond to unfounded criticism is to write cracking yarns which is exactly what we are doing. No other group of journalists does public interest journalism better than our newsrooms. Monday’s event doesn’t change a thing.” All fair points. But they also deserve a little more analysis. The note has clearly been carefully written. There’s nothing in phrases like “these concerns were conveyed by me” and “he concedes it could have been handled better” to suggest that Chessell actually got to talk to his boss about this directly. That may be because of geography - I understand that soon after the dinner Marks headed overseas on an investor tour. But the fact that Marks hasn’t had anything to say about it - not even a statement in his own words - could be taken as a hint that it’s a row that’s a bit beneath him. As Amanda Meade pointed out in The Guardian yesterday: “It took almost two days and a near revolt by print journalists for the chief executive of Nine Entertainment, Hugh Marks, to admit it was a mistake to host the $10,000-a-head Liberal party fundraiser. “Even then, Marks did not come out and make the statement himself, leaving it to the group executive editor, James Chessell”. And he may see it as beneath his pay grade. The fact is that Nine is a $3bn+ ASX company - and one whose share price barely blipped during the row this week. And one of the reasons the TV networks are successful businesses is because they are good at behind-the-scenes lobbying. The cosy 2017 agreement with former PM Malcolm Turnbull to abolish spectrum licence fees and to allow big media mergers - like the one that put Fairfax into Nine’s hands - was a result of intensive industry lobbying. It was worth hundreds of millions of dollars to the networks. And governments don’t just magically decide to suddenly stop charging to access public spectrum. It happens because of lobbying. No wonder they threw a thank you fundraiser for Turnbull on the set of The Voice a few months later. But, like they say, you don’t usually see sausages being made. However, the calculus changed for Nine once it acquired its newspaper mastheads. There was a more minor sign of the clash of cultures a few months back. Remember the 60 Minutes partnership with the newspaper journos on the activities of Crown Casino? I can’t actually remember the allegations now - just the ridicule about the over-hyped promo. Perhaps not to the same extent as the newspapers, but journalistic credibility has always mattered to Nine for commercial reasons. Nine News is an important brand. Viewer trust affects ratings. In 2011, I broke the [Choppergate]( story. (Not the Bronwyn Bishop Choppergate story - the Choppergate before that.) It came when Nine staff in Queensland faked live crosses to the search for murdered teenager Daniel Morcombe from their helicopter. In one cross it was hovering near Nine’s Brisbane HQ, while the next day it was parked on the helipad with the lights turned off so viewers could not tell it was on the ground. Another network got suspicious and filmed the chopper on the helipad before passing me the footage. Nine fired three journos and the network’s Queensland news director resigned. Arguably it was harsh, but it was about protecting the brand. Marks’ tenure has been a good one for Nine since becoming CEO in November 2015. And he had a diverse background, including as a lawyer, co-owner of a talent agency and boss of a production company. But less so with journalism. In March 2016, early on his watch, came the 60 Minutes Lebanon debacle. Presenter Tara Brown and three other staff members were arrested on allegations of child abduction in Beirut. It emerged that Nine had bankrolled a bodged attempt to help a mother snatch her children back from their father. While Marks was largely kept out of the controversy at the time, the six figure sum involved would have been authorised at CEO level. The scale of that disaster puts this week’s controversy in context. Nonetheless, it will also take a long time to go away. It will be a stick for the newspaper mastheads’ critics (and supporters) to beat them. Anyone looking for bias, or perceiving Liberal favouritism will be able to claim they know which side Nine is on. Yes, editorial independence comes into it, but it’s bad business because it’s bad branding. Ride on time We might only be six days into Spring, but the shack is already looking overgrown. Almost time for me to jump on the mower if there’s a break in the drizzle. And before I leave you, please do give [this week’s Mumbrellacast]( a listen; it was a good one, recorded backstage at our B2B Marketing Summit. Our editor Viv and I were joined by Rob McKnight, former boss of Studio 10 and now host of the excellent TV Blackbox podcast. We talked about Nine’s Liberal fundraiser, the axing of Ten’s Rove McManus variety show and - of course - asked Rob what really happened in the infamous Brussels sprout incident. And next Thursday September 19 sees the Mumbrella Publish conference in Sydney. It’s a strong program for anyone interested in where the publishing industry is going. I’ll be moderating the closing session, featuring Nicholas Gray from The Australian, Rebecca Costello from Schwartz Media, Junkee Media boss Neil Ackland and - deliciously - Nine’s publishing boss Chris Janz. We’ll have a lot to talk about! There’s also one more big last minute addition which we’ll be announcing in the next few days. Watch this space... You can grab tickets for Publish [via this link](. And if you’re in the mood for breakfast telly, I’ll be heading back to Sydney via Melbourne to review the papers on ABC News Breakfast on Tuesday morning. Once I’m back in Sydney, I’ll be doing one final sentimental walk through Mumbrella House before crowbarring that plaque off the wall as a souvenir. I told you I was sentimental. As ever I welcome your emails to tim@mumbrella.com.au . Our editor Vivienne Kelly - vivienne@mumbrella.com.au - is on the newsdesk across the weekend. I’ve got a lawn to tame. Have a great weekend. Toodlepip… Tim Burrowes Content Director - Mumbrella Mumbrella | 46-48 Balfour Street Chippendale NSW 2008 Australia This email was sent to {EMAIL}. If you would rather not receive Mumbrella's Best of the Week email you can [unsubscribe]( or [manage subscriptions](. [Facebook]( [LinkedIn]( [Twitter](