‘The historic fear of the front page of the Daily Telegraph really shouldn’t be shaping policy anymore’: New Schwartz Media CEO wants a diverse landscape
Independent media is crucial for the Australian landscape to help audiences challenge orthodoxy, not just as a counterweight to the concentration of media ownership, according to Schwartz Media’s editor-in-chief and new CEO, Erik Jensen.
Jensen stressed that independent media can “shake the country out of some of its worst impulses”. For example, it can build audiences that challenge the way politics and media are intertwined.
The shadow cast by Murdoch press in Australia has altered the conversation about local media, he argued, and he’d like to see a more diversely-owned landscape dispel this.
“It’s not diverse enough in terms of ownership… because of that, many politicians still react to the Murdoch media as if it is the media that is determining the outcome of elections,” Jensen explained.
“Our politics has not updated its view of where power resides in the media, and I think it really needs to.
“The historic fear of the front page of the Daily Telegraph really shouldn’t be shaping policy anymore.”
Schwartz Media is one of Australia’s largest independent publishers
But, in terms of the ways audiences are served by independent media, Jensen said there is an enormous amount of diversity.
In order to grow that, he argued that the Australian media must keep challenging expectations about what it does, and what it’s always done.
“That’s who we have working in our newsrooms, that’s who we regard as our audiences, how we treat those audiences,” he explained.
“It’s about the assumptions we have about them, about their intelligence. The changing nature of the Australian public has changed what assumptions we should have about news – and those things need to be constantly challenged.
Erik Jensen
“What I’m excited about is that we are in a place now of increasing uncertainty,” he continued.
“The problem is that there are people within the Australian media who refuse that uncertainty and who continue to push forward, with great sureness, things that I think are probably wrong.”
Within that uncertainty, he said, the industry will change and improve how it operates.
“We need to have a willingness to confront orthodoxy.”
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Lauren McNamara was the associate editor at Mumbrella. She joined in November 2022 as editorial assistant, after completing a Bachelor of Communications (Journalism) at UTS. She left Mumbrella in August 2025.
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topics
Australian Media
erik jensen
Independent Media
media landscape
Murdoch Media
Publishers
Schwartz Media
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