‘It’s a win-win for me’: Joe Aston returns to the AFR
Joe Aston will return to The Australian Financial Review as a monthly columnist, after leaving the publication in late 2023.
His monthly column will appear online and in the AFR Weekend, and his deal “includes a revenue-sharing arrangement and pre- and post-publication legal support”, according to the Financial Review.
Aston will also be launching a new publishing house, Rampart, on February 10.
His output through Rampart will be subscription-based, priced at $65 per month, or $680 a year, and will be ran as a partnership with independent publisher The Squiz – with the Perpetual Equities Team the corporate launch partner.
“It’s a win-win for me to go off and pursue my own destiny and create something really unique in the Australian market while maintaining my connection with what I think is the best newspaper in the country,” Aston said.
“Building a tech stack and meeting with advertisers is a whole new world to me. I’m a journalist, so I’m pretty good at meeting deadlines, but being a small business owner is a whole other universe. I hope that being a small business person makes me a better business journalist.”
Aston’s recently published book The Chairman’s Lounge put the final nail in the coffin of Qantas CEO Alan Joyce, whose failings he exposed through his Rear Window column over many years, forcing his early retirement.
The book also forced PM Anthony Albanese to deny that he’d asked Joyce personally for a number of seat upgrades while in office.
The AFR’s editor-in-chief James Chessell said Aston’s return to the paper is “a great thing for our audience”.
“Joe built his reputation as an incisive, unflinching and uproarious journalist writing the Rear Window column,” Chessell said.
Editor Cosima Marriner added: “One of the excellent things about this masthead is its ability to maintain ties with key people after they step down from big jobs – the obvious recent examples being Tony Boyd and Michael Stutchbury, who starts as editor-at-large next week.”
Keep up to date with the latest in media and marketing
Got a tip?
Nathan Jolly is the Features Editor at Mumbrella. He joined the team in July, 2023.
Linkedin
Have your say