It’s time to look again at Mamamia

Mamamia was once dismissed as clickbait content pumped out by an army of underpaid juniors. But the company’s culture has matured, and it has found its purpose, suggests Mumbrella founder and editor-at-large Tim Burrowes, in a piece that first appeared on his Unmade newsletter.

Tim Burrowes

October 7, 2021 10:03

Hamish Blake and Andy Lee have a game on their podcast, which is a good idea with a terrible name. “Tell Us Someone We Haven’t Thought About For A While” challenges listeners to call them up and do exactly that.

The listener wins if Blake and Lee concede that the celebrity the listener mentions has indeed, not been in their thoughts. It’s harder to beat the duo than you’d think.

For me, the media business version of that has been Mamamia.

Its content mastermind Mia Freedman is sufficiently ubiquitous that she’s remained permanently in view, but as an organisation, I realise that my perceptions of Mamamia were stuck at some point around 2017.

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Tim Burrowes

Tim Burrowes is the publisher of Mumbrella and Unmade. He co-founded Mumbrella in 2008 and sister title Unmade in 2021. He's worked in the UK, Middle East, Asia & Australia and has specialised in writing about the communications world for the last 25 years. He wrote the book Media Unmade, published in 2021, and became the presenter of MediaLand on ABC Radio National in 2025.