First sparks fly between Scire and Nine’s AFR
The Australian Financial Review has taken its first potshot at breakaway exec Chris Janz’s new journalism start-up.
Testing the grounds for its new ‘Media Observed’ column, AFR journos Mark Di Stefano and Sam Buckingham-Jones noted that Janz’ two latest hires means he now rules over “an empire of five men, all of whom have worked for Nine/Fairfax”.
As he looks to create a competitor of sorts to Nine’s AFR, Janz has, as the column pointed out, primarily looked to his old back garden as a talent hunting ground, with Anthony Galloway and Phillip Wen now jumping ship.
The masthead called Janz “desperate” to find staff to fill his “generational start-up”, with his “poach-a-thon”, as the masthead calls it, proving tricky so far.
A few hours later, late on Sunday night, Dr Mumbo saw the former Nine exec fire right back via his LinkedIn, publishing a screenshotted brief conversation between himself and Di Stefano.
“The ‘I’ve heard something in the corridor journalism’ on the homepage of the AFR right now is exactly why we created Scire,” Janz swiped.
While Janz declined to expand any further on the project, he did at least say it is more than “five blokes in a shed”.
Dr Mumbo looks forward to seeing this particular battle heat up in the coming months, as we eventually find out who else Janz is hiding in that shed of his.
As I said on LInkedIn, Dr Mumbo … Fairfax had a rich and treasured legacy of tough, independent media coverage including about the company itself. It was (sometimes very!) uncomfortable but right. Now we have text messaged gossip or corporate spin.
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