Seb Costello bails on Daily Mail, joins the Herald Sun

Nathan Jolly

February 20, 2026 10:59

Seb Costello bails on Daily Mail, joins the Herald Sun

Seb Costello will join the Herald Sun newsroom on Monday

Seb Costello will be joining the Herald Sun as a senior reporter, following a brief stint as a Daily Mail columnist.

Costello spent 13 years at Nine, including as a reporter on A Current Affair, as the network’s European correspondent, and a role at 3AW.

He was introduced by the Daily Mail late last year in a “brand new gossip column” as “Melbourne’s ultimate insider”.

But Costello started contributing to the Herald Sun last month, and will join the newsroom as a senior reporter on Monday.

In an internal email sent to Herald Sun staff yesterday afternoon, editor Sam Weir said Costello is “an award-winning newsbreaker who has worked in the Melbourne media for two decades”.

Costello said, ” I’m really looking forward to working with everyone, doing what the Herald Sun does best — setting the news agenda for Melbourne.”

Costello, who is the son of former Australian Treasurer and Nine chairman Peter Costello, resigned from Nine in March 2025 in the fallout from a tabloid TV news story. Costello and an A Current Affair film crew had chased Mo Ahmed, an executive from Oak Capital, into a hotel bathroom, attempting to stage an interview through a toilet cubicle door.

Ahmed, whose firm was being sued by ASIC at the time, alleged assault, and Nine launched an internal review into the incident in early March. Costello resigned shortly after.

Later that same month, Costello appeared on football personality Sam Newman’s podcast, where he opened up about the stressors he felt at Nine.

“I felt at times during my employment at Nine that I was under huge amounts of pressure,” Costello said. “Part of that was because my dad was in the company as well.

“I felt like his position created an atmosphere of resentment towards me internally from some people who would say: ‘Seb only got this because of his dad’.

“I felt like I had to be perfect because I knew if anything went wrong it would end up in the newspapers.”

Costello’s father Peter was chair of Nine from 2016 until June 2024, when he stood down after he was filmed allegedly assaulting a reporter from The Australian, at Canberra Airport – an act he denied.