{"id":913205,"date":"2026-10-02T07:46:11","date_gmt":"2026-10-02T07:46:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/913205\/"},"modified":"2026-10-02T07:46:11","modified_gmt":"2026-10-02T07:46:11","slug":"news-corps-housing-special-proves-a-bit-too-close-to-home-as-cadets-enlisted-as-case-studies-amanda-meade","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/913205\/","title":{"rendered":"News Corp\u2019s housing special proves a bit too close to home as cadets enlisted as case studies | Amanda Meade"},"content":{"rendered":"

The News Corp tabloids and news.com.au have been running The Home Front<\/a> all week, a sponsored housing special which kicked off on Monday with gloomy front pages across the nation declaring the \u201cGreat Australian Dream\u201d of owning your own home was \u201cin tatters\u201d.<\/p>\n

The six unsmiling young Australians pictured on the front pages of the Daily Telegraph, the Herald Sun and their stablemates were not subjects plucked from the general population for interviews about their struggles with renting and the cost of living \u2013 they were the company\u2019s own cadet journalists.<\/p>\n

\u201cYoung Australians are at the coalface of Australia\u2019s housing crisis so we tapped into our network of cadet reporters to power our Home Front series,\u201d the papers said.<\/p>\n

News Corp cadets on the front page of the Herald Sun<\/p>\n

One cadet said she would never own a home and would rent for life. \u201cIf I decided to purchase a home or apartment, I would be in debt and any life changes or health issues could create serious financial hardship,\u201d she wrote.<\/p>\n

The whole exercise was sponsored by CommBank, complete with the bank\u2019s yellow brand colours incorporated into the title of the series, Our National Housing Special.<\/p>\n

The main story was based on a survey of 1,000 Australians conducted by an in-house research arm of News Corp called the Growth Distillery, in partnership with consultants SEC Newgate.<\/p>\n

Much of the blame for the housing crisis was sheeted home to the government and the \u201cintense public debate over federal Labor\u2019s shock $77 billion tax hikes\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe consumer price index has risen by nearly 20 per cent since Anthony Albanese came to power four years ago,\u201d readers were told.<\/p>\n

Wednesday\u2019s papers offered gen Z tips to get into the property market<\/a>. Tip number six was how to negotiate to increase your wage: \u201cCheck the market rate for your role, document what you\u2019ve delivered, then book a conversation with your boss. Two women I know did exactly this, prepared together for an hour, and walked out with a combined $37,000 pay rise.\u201d<\/p>\n

We can\u2019t wait to see how many of the company\u2019s cadets take up their own advice and pull off a pay rise this big. For the record, News Corp recruitment ads offer cadetships that pay about $65,000. <\/p>\n

Courting the wrong man<\/p>\n

Readers of the Sydney Morning Herald and the Age\u2019s CBD column were quite surprised to read that the premier of Western Australia, Roger Cook, was going to launch Josh Frydenberg\u2019s memoir, A Grateful Son, next month.<\/p>\n

After all, Cook has been the Labor leader in WA since 2023 and Frydenberg is a former federal treasurer and high-profile Liberal.<\/p>\n

Well we didn\u2019t have to wonder for long, because CBD published a correction the next day: \u201cAn earlier version of this story incorrectly stated that WA premier Roger Cook would attend Josh Frydenberg\u2019s book launch. Former premier Richard Court will attend.\u201d<\/p>\n

Court was the Liberal premier from 1993 to 2001.<\/p>\n

Chexit leaves hard feelings<\/p>\n

It took about 24 hours for the resignation of the editor-in-chief of the Australian Financial Review, James Chessell, last Wednesday to unravel spectacularly.<\/p>\n

Nine Publishing\u2019s managing director, Tory Maguire, told the newsroom the AFR editor, Cosima Marriner, would replace Chessell, and his last day would be 12 October as he had resigned to join the former AFR columnist Joe Aston at his media startup, Rampart.<\/p>\n

No surprises there as Chessell and Aston are close, having worked together on the staff of the Liberal minister Joe Hockey, but the speed at which Chessell jumped after just two years at the helm angered the troops.<\/p>\n

Under Chessell\u2019s editorship the former Rear Window columnist had signed a sweetheart deal with the Fin to write a column a month<\/a> in return for the not inconsiderable support of Nine\u2019s legal team. \u201cThere is no indication this arrangement will change,\u201d the Age and the SMH reported on Wednesday.<\/p>\n

James Chessell is joining former AFR columnist Joe Aston at his media startup, Rampart. Photograph: Mick Tsikas\/AAP<\/p>\n

By Friday Chessell was out of the door, along with Aston\u2019s monthly column. Aston was put on notice that he had a few months to find himself a new legal team. All bets were off.<\/p>\n

This extraordinary backflip was the result of an uprising of sorts on the floor of the AFR, where it has to be said Chessell was not as popular as the more benign character of Michael Stutchbury<\/a> had been for 13 years.<\/p>\n

Staff told Weekly Beast they felt Chessell had been a disruptive force \u2013 in his address he said some journalists would be relieved to see him go \u2013 and then had betrayed them to join a rival. They did not want him staying on for two weeks with access to the financial daily\u2019s newslist. After all, he was about to edit another business publication.<\/p>\n

Nine has always denied it, but staff see Rampart as a direct competitor to the AFR and believe it should not have been given the legal and editorial support it was.<\/p>\n

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At a town hall on Monday some staff voiced their concern over Chessell\u2019s management style and Marriner said she would be a different type of manager.<\/p>\n

This week Rampart poached another Nine journalist, Nick Bonyhady, the business editor of the Sydney Morning Herald and the Age. Bonyhady has relinquished his title and gone back to reporting while he works out his notice.<\/p>\n

Nine\u2019s sinking feeling<\/p>\n

The near revolt at the AFR is small beer when it comes to the overall pain being felt at the moment at Australia\u2019s biggest media company, Nine Entertainment<\/a>.<\/p>\n

In recent weeks 30 journalists have taken redundancy from the SMH and the Age after the company said it had to make cuts due to the \u201cextreme state of disruption because of AI\u201d. Nine is stripping out more than $160m<\/a> in costs over a three-year period as it revamps its business.<\/p>\n

Amanda Laing was made redundant after just 18 months at Nine Entertainment<\/p>\n

Last week Amanda Laing, who was brought in to run a new streaming and broadcast division just 18 months ago, was made redundant. The chief executive, Matt Stanton, said the division, made up of the Nine Network, 9Now app and streaming platform Stan, would be subsumed into the group. With free-to-air television advertising in steep decline, Laing was under pressure.<\/p>\n

Just five years ago under Hugh Marks, now the ABC\u2019s boss, Nine was worth $5bn. Under Stanton it has fallen to $1.04bn.<\/p>\n

The share price is down 42% over the past 12 months, and has been in freefall since early September, down to 68c on Thursday.<\/p>\n

A giant of news<\/p>\n

There are not many news chiefs who were as loved and admired as Peter Manning, the former head of ABC TV news and current affairs and Radio National, who died on Monday aged 81.<\/p>\n

Manning was honoured last year by the Walkleys<\/a> for his outstanding contribution to journalism. His name may not have been that well known by the public, but he was one of the most influential forces in public interest journalism behind the scenes.<\/p>\n

His former ABC colleague Jonathan Holmes wrote a personal recollection<\/a> of his friend\u2019s life for ABC Alumni.<\/p>\n

An author and academic in his later years, Manning oversaw a golden age for Four Corners between 1985 and 1989 and launched programs such as Lateline, Foreign Correspondent and Landline as well as the Labor in Power series.<\/p>\n

Peter Manning (centre) with Kate McClymont and Chris Masters at the\u00a02025 Walkleys. Photograph: Adam Hollingworth\/The Walkley Foundation<\/p>\n

At the Walkleys in December, the former Four Corners reporter Chris Masters and the Sydney Morning Herald\u2019s chief investigative reporter, Kate McClymont, praised Manning for his outstanding contribution to investigative journalism.<\/p>\n

Under his leadership, Four Corners won the Gold Walkley in 1985 for Masters\u2019 report about the sinking of the Greenpeace protest ship Rainbow Warrior.<\/p>\n

Manning also gave some of the biggest names in television their first break, including Stan Grant, Marian Wilkinson, Sue Spencer, Tony Jones, Deb Whitmont and Paul Barry.<\/p>\n

He is survived by his partner, Carole, his children, Thea Burke, Paddy Manning and Megan Manning, and four grandchildren.<\/p>\n

His funeral will be at St Brigid\u2019s church in Marrickville on 9 October.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The News Corp tabloids and news.com.au have been running The Home Front all week, a sponsored housing special…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":913206,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[64,63,44],"class_list":["post-913205","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-australia","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/913205","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=913205"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/913205\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/913206"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=913205"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=913205"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=913205"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}