Capital Brief nabs former AFR legal journo, continues team expansion
Business and politics publisher Capital Brief has continued its expansion, bringing on the Australian Financial Review’s former legal editor Michael Pelly.
The news and analysis site now employs 30 people, the majority editorial, and will be recruiting several more roles including a deputy editor and senior correspondent.
CEO Chris Janz told Mumbrella his outfit had “no ambition to break even in the short term.”
Chris Janz
“We are growing, and we’re ahead of the plan. The beauty of this model is that if we add journalists, we add subscribers … we have proven this model works,” he said.
Janz was tight-lipped on audience and revenue, saying the benefit of being privately owned was not being distracted by ASX filings. He said because Capital Brief was aimed at business and political leaders, attempting to maximise audience without constraint would be counterproductive.
“We don’t talk about reach,” he said. “The moment you make page views the focus you change the journalism and you lose your core audience. Our target is the smart people running the Australian economy. They don’t want clickbait.”
Janz said Capital Brief is a “two-speed newsroom”, with analysis and insight – the left-hand side of the desktop site – being the main focus. Breaking news in the right-hand column is the secondary function.
Breaking news is staffed 24 hours, five days a week, with two journalists working internationally to cover overnights.
Michael Pelly joins Capital Brief after leaving the AFR late last year. He was legal editor. He has also worked at The Australian, The Sydney Morning Herald, and the Australian Law Journal.
According to his LinkedIn page, Pelly has a law degree and was admitted to the NSW Supreme Court as a solicitor in 1993.
Janz is a veteran of Australian media, having previously been the chief digital and publishing officer at Nine. He founded Capital Brief with David Eisman in 2023.
Capital Brief is backed by Sydney-based private equity firm Shearwater Capital, which specialises in ANZ technology startups. Shearwater is also a founding investor in Evenbetter, the AI-based remuneration platform Mumbrella covered last week.
Correction: This story originally stated that Pelly moved directly from the AFR to Capital Brief. In fact, Pelly was one of many voluntary redundancies from Nine in August 2024. Thank you readers.
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