Nick Leys to edit Oz media diary
The new diary editor for The Australian’s Media section is to be the Melbourne based Nick Leys.
The announcement:
Today Stephen Brook, editor of The Australian’s Media section, announced that Nick Leys will commence in September as the new Diary columnist.
He joins the team from the Herald Sun where he was a senior reporter.
“I am delighted Nick is joining the Media team. I’d like to thank Caroline Overington for all her efforts with Diary and wish her well as she takes up her dream job on The Weekend Australian Magazine,” Stephen Brook said.
Nick Leys comes to The Australian after a well established media career at the ABC, Fairfax and News Limited.
Nick started his career as a reporter on the Sunday Mail in Brisbane and as a trainee at the Sydney Morning Herald in 1999. He was a researcher on the ABC’s Media Watch, before joining The Australian’s Sydney Bureau in 2004, where he had a number of roles, including editor of the Strewth column.
He was promoted to the Sydney bureau chief and deputy national chief of staff.
He joined in Sunday Telegraph 2008 before moving Melbourne and the Herald Sun in 2010.
During the federal election last year, Nick toured Victoria to complete a series called The Hitchhikers Guide to the Election.
The Diary column has been previously edited by Jonathan Este, Amanda Meade, Stephen Brook and Caroline Overington.
Nick will be based in the Melbourne bureau.
Source: The Australian press release
Oh thank God for that. I was wondering whether Overington’s reign of hatched, matched, despatch, catched, latched etc etc etc gossip was ever going to end. I suspect her time had come when there were no more gal pals and mates to shout out to (or they’re all on Twitter).
Sure the Diary is meant as a bit of fun in the Media section, but as Amanda Meade showed before her, it can be done with a bit of substance and dignity. The last was sadly lacking in that horrid one liner, a month or so ago, about someone “had better watch their back.”
Worst thing about it is that Overington obviously has so much talent. Her coverage of the Wheat Board kickbacks. The coverage of some of the most distressing community services cases in NSW. Her novels aren’t my cup of tea, but you can tell the desire to get out stories from the dark places in child protection that could never be published as news.
Good luck to her in the Magazine, and good luck to Nick Leys.
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Nick has always been a genuinely clever writer, in contrast to Caroline, who is way out of her depth with this sort of stuff, as shown by this piece of tripe she wrote about our beloved Les Kennedy today: http://tiny.cc/6moh6. He deserves better than this.
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