Schwartz Media launches two new titles in ‘answer to the exodus of specialist journalists from the general press’

Schwartz Media has launched two new titles aimed at the energy and banking sectors.

Online titles Australian Energy Daily and Australian Banking Daily come from the Schwartz Pro arm of Schwartz Media, and will be the “answer to the exodus of specialist journalists from the general press”, according to the publisher.

Australian Banking Daily

Schwartz Pro is headed up by former deputy editor of The Conversation Charis Palmer who joined in 2018.

Palmer has taken on the role of CEO of Schwartz Pro, with Morry Schwartz holding the publisher title.

Palmer said the publisher has been able to be nimble with the new titles, which will allow it to succeed where others have failed.

“The paywall model is showing green shoots for some of the major players already, and I think they all realise consumers are willing to pay for quality journalism and they’re delivering it. But before the paywalls went up, the focus was on getting clicks with the least amount of investment in journalism. Around this time a lot of specialist journalists were packaged out, and now the business models can’t support bringing them back.  We think by specialising, and not carrying legacy print issues, we can forge a new path,” Palmer said.

Both titles will be available in a shortened form for free, but consumers will need to pay for the full content.

“We’ve been running free daily newsletters aggregating policy news since August last year and have built a diverse audience across the different groups of people we think will subscribe. The product includes more than just our daily journalism – things to help subscribers do their job, like policy summaries, tailored calendars so they don’t miss inquiry submission deadlines for example, and a people tracker so people new to the sector can understand who the influencers are. It’s that part of it that we’re talking to them about now so they can see the value we offer,” said Palmer.

Morry Schwartz emailing to say he’s starting a couple of paid specialist media outlets. Brilliant. We have ample mass market outlets. This is what we need more of. #ausmedia pic.twitter.com/YhHRRvU72L

— Jason Murphy (@jasemurphy) May 7, 2019

The business is also currently recruiting for a policy reporter, a researcher and an account executive. Palmer said the business is looking to scale very quickly and is on the lookout for editors of other titles who have strong subject manner expertise in the cities/infrastructure, health and telecommunications fields.

Australian Energy Daily

Australian Banking Daily is edited by ex-News Corp journalist Alex Sampson with Sophie Boot as energy reporter and Alexander Liddington-Cox as policy reporter. The title has four tiers of subscription – the free model, ‘The Mercenary’ for $99 a month, ‘Advisory Team’ for $299 a month, or Pro Pack for $399, which is listed as coming soon.

“We’ve deliberately decided to exclude advertising, so there’s no room for undue influence. It also means instead of having people focused on advertising sales, we can invest in journalists and researchers,” said Palmer.

Australian Energy Daily has the same tiers for subscription and doesn’t have an editor listed, although Boot is also policy reporter for the title.

Schwartz Media also publishes The Saturday Paper, The Monthly and Australian Foreign Policy.