Axed Fairfax journalist Michael West to launch own investigative journalism website
West: The Fairfax strategy is clearly a clickbait one
Former Sydney Morning Herald investigative business journalist Michael West has signalled an intention to go out on his own, publishing investigative pieces on his own website which is set to launch after the Federal election.
West was one of an estimated 30 forced redundancies made by Fairfax Media this month, which saw the likes of AFR media editor Dominic White, economics editor Alan Mitchell, international editor Tony Walker, cartoonist Rod Clement and property editor and associate editor Robert Harley depart the publishing company.
At the time, West tweeted: “Last day today. Told my skill-set not aligned with Fairfax strategy going forward. #sacked”.
Good on you, Michael. All the best with it.
There’s a passion for investigative journalism over at https://reddit.com/r/australia, as well as a very large audience.
And don’t be shy to make an account and engage them. They love that stuff too.
More than a handful of big-time shysters won’t welcome this development.
West raises a good point about clickbait.
Methinks that the upper echelons of Fairfax don’t understand that when they see the ‘digital audience’ all it takes is one click a month to contribute to that MONTHLY total audience figure. That’s worth bugger-all in a CPM campaign and nothing in a CPC campaign.
They sell around 100,000 SMH’s a day – just shy of 3 million a month. Do the maths yourself.
Eroding editorial will have little effect on clickbait activity but will erode subscriptions and eventually hard-copy sales.
There is data, and data that you understand. It feels like the latter.
Admirable idea — and you may well build a reasonable sort of audience, but I think that like pretty much every other journalist who has struck out on their own, you will struggle with monetisation. If the main revenue model is advertising, you will need massive scale to generate meaningful revenues. If it’s subscription, you will bump up against the same problem big media has encountered: very few people are prepared to pay for content, even very good content.
Stoked to hear this. I obviously respect the commitment to investigation that Michael has and am very glad he will be continuing as the public need his eagle eye on business nowadays more than ever, though, for mine, the best thing about Michael’s reporting is how he can convert the murky ‘business’ world with all it’s terminology into ‘English’ the rest of us can understand. So glad we will no be losing his skills & talent!
the only journalist in australia that knew enough about the bigbiz arseholes to actually work out what was going on and report it..but without fairfax bucks behind him, it’ll be a more dangerous game, better get a lawyer son!
Good on you Michael. Looking forward to your new work.
Fairfax don’t seem to understand their subscribers. They could drop every single sport story and have subscriber numbers rise-or at least stay. I’ll bet they have never read Saturday paper etc keep us in touch there are many ways we can support not only financially one possible business model might include SMSF trustees for example
Delighted to hear M.W. is determined to keep fighting the good fight – the country needs his uncompromising exposure of shonky and unethical business practices and tax dodging. Key to his survival is obviously finance. Doubt that advertising or subscriptions will do it. Unless he can hook up with The Guardian or ABC or some such news organisation that’s independent of the very advertisers/corporates his work necessarily investigates, his best bet would seem to be either through an angel investor/ financier who shares his commitment and expects no financial return or through crowd funding. Would think there are many equally concerned Australians who would support him. Either way I hope he can pull it off.
Good on michael
Always looked forward to your articles
The country needs journalists like you
This is good news because Michael Wests writing is entertaining as well as news worthy. I love his style. I will be checking his news website over Fairfax’s. I wish him well with this venture.
Your articles were the first I turned to, followed by Gittin’s.
Thankfully Verrender has found a home (and platform) at the ABC – but for how long?
The once mighty SMH masthead sinking beneath the waves, succumbing to the chimera that pop journalism is it’s saviour. Those of us who looked for brave, punchy investigative insights into what is really going on in the secretive world of corpmoney have been abandoned by the msm. My subscription hangs by a thread.
Is The Guardian the only major player left on the scene? They need a West to join the diminishing band of journo’s with principle and integrity.
Look forward to the day when Michael West is a Senator. He can do good work there. In these days of low-cost digital publicity, it might not be too hard.
Well played Michael.
From what I’ve seen so far, you’ll have my support. Continue to stand up to the establishment where it is warranted.
There are way too many “yes men” in the MSM.