What you need to know:

• Nine Publishing boss James Chessell planning diversification in bid to maintain growth after “one in a lifetime” news audience boost from Covid and Trump.
• Claims Nine less interventionist than rivals such as News Corp in the newsrooms – because trust and independence equal ad dollars and subscription revenue.
• Says Nine’s publishing revenue gains – up 53 per cent including media bargaining code cash from platforms, or 23 per cent without – show Nine is winning media sales battle.
• Aims to give News a run for its money in southeast Queensland.
• Says James Packer has gone quiet after email “blizzard” following recent stoush.
• Reckons The Guardian is “too scared” to take on risky stories.
• But agrees audiences are looking for evidence of “ideology or bias” as a result of media own agendas.

"If you’re not getting shouted at by powerful people on a regular basis, you are probably not doing your job properly,” reckons James Chessell. As a journalist and editor at both News and Fairfax, Chessell was always a troublemaker – and the instinct remains intact, as evidenced by his recent stoush with James Packer and a jab at The Guardian’s purported purism in this week’s podcast. He claims the London-owned masthead is “too scared” to take on the big investigative stories.

Now running Nine’s publishing P&L, Chessell must straddle church and state. So far, “I’ve found it quite easy,” he says of the transition. “It’s better to have a managing director of publishing that understands the charter and is happy to go into bat for the mastheads. It’s more problematic – and perhaps that was occasionally the case in the distant history – when you have people in those roles that perhaps don’t have an affinity with the newsrooms and how journalism works. But that is where I grew up, so I have no problem.”

Independent always?

While agreeing media sales is “a knife fight in a phone box”, he claims Nine is non-interventionist, insisting there is “no constant battle between editorial and commercial” because editorial independence equates to revenue.

“The economic value of The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, the Brisbane Times, WA Today and the AFR rests in the fact that they are fiercely independent, high quality newsrooms that focus on public interest journalism and holding the powerful to account," he says. "That's why people want to subscribe to those publications and to a certain degree, that’s why people are happy to place ads in them, because they know it is a trusted environment.”

Hence Nine stepping up investigative journalism resource. Chessell declined to put a figure on that investment, but thinks hard-hitting journalism will separate Nine from rival newsrooms.

He likewise side-stepped questions about News Corp journos' “anticipatory compliance”, as coined by former News exec Bruce Dover, who in his 2008 book Rupert’s Adventures in China claimed editors can be prone to heading off commercial conflict.

Suggesting “corporate intervention is probably more pronounced there [at News Corp]”, Chessell says there are always exceptions to any rule, i.e. him.

“I remember breaking a story about Austar and Foxtel in merger talks when I worked at The Australian. No one at News wanted that to be published, it was deeply inconvenient and several executives made that point quite directly to me. But then I rang up someone really senior and he said, ‘Everyone's going to get upset [but] it's a good yarn, just go with it.’”

Nine vs. News vs. Guardian

While “News Corp has its issues and problems” Chessell says his two-year stint at The Australian was formative.

“On a newsroom basis, there was always a good focus on sharpness in the way stories are written and edited. I learned a lot there about getting the news in the lead. People can sometimes be a little flabby in their writing and sharpness was a word you heard there a lot.”

Chessell has fewer conciliatory words for The Guardian, now making trust and editorial independence the foundations of a push for 15 per cent year on year growth, and which via YouGov research found that 82 per cent Australians think that media ownership, and owner agendas, skews the content.

“We look at the reasons people provide to us for subscribing and public interest journalism is a key part of that, it's a real point of difference to us,” says Chessell.

“I think a lot of the other media companies out there – and The Guardian is a classic example – they're too scared to do this stuff where there's risk involved. They tend to follow us and so we back [our] journos. They don't come cheap, nor should they. They're really valuable people, the work they do can take a long time. It's not your sugar hit return on investment – it's a long-term pay off, but it's well worth it.”

Packer whacker

A well-publicised spat with James Packer was the result of one such slow burns following Nine’s six-month ‘Crown Unmasked’ investigation into Crown Casinos, subsequently published across The Age, SMH and 60 Minutes and ultimately eliciting in a barrage of emails from Packer to Nine execs. These and other Packer emails were subsequently published as a front page story on The Australian, with Packer claiming Nine chairman and former Treasurer Peter Costello had been paid $300,000 in 2011 to lobby for his firm with the Victorian gaming minister. Nine refuted the lobbying claim, though admitted Costello had been a paid advisor.

Bombarded with emails from Packer, who offered a full and frank character appraisal, Chessell subsequently published a note to all staff. He’s reluctant to revisit the affair.

“I need to be a little bit careful about this. I put out a note to staff at the time the story – if you want to call it that – was published in The Australian, explaining that you shouldn't believe everything The Australian’s media writers write and also that James [Packer] has documented [mental health] issues and so we should tread carefully,” says Chessell.

“I'm not sure why [Packer] is not a fan of ours. He repeatedly says it has nothing to do with our groundbreaking investigations into governance shortcomings at casinos. So I'm at a loss to think what it could be,” he adds. “What I can say is that the blizzard of correspondence that I was receiving dropped off after that story was published. So if the story served a purpose, perhaps that’s what it was.”

As he says: “If you're not getting shouted at by powerful people on a semi-regular basis, you're probably not doing your job properly.”

It’s advice the next generation of masthead journos could do worse than follow.

“The younger journalists should accept they're not going to be the Chanticleer columnist in their first five years. That doesn't describe all of them, but you do get the occasional character – and they could benefit from doing some of the hard yards,” says Chessell. “If you're in a business publication, maybe doing a few corporate rounds might make you a better Chanticleer columnist when you eventually get there.”

Diversification ahead

Nine’s upfront last month signalled a concerted effort to integrate its TV, publishing and radio businesses. Chessell signals increasing crossover between divisions around news and increasingly lifestyle as the publisher accepts that huge audience spikes accrued during Covid will inevitably fade.

“We've been through a pretty genuinely once in a lifetime cycle. Not just the pandemic but also the US political story under Trump was something that provided endless fascination to our readers,” says Chessell. “So you're right, audience was inflated. In the case of the pandemic, it’s pretty rare to have a story that's incredibly gripping but also has a direct relevance on an almost hourly basis on how to lead your life.”

While post-Covid audiences “haven’t dropped dramatically, the risk for us is there’s a flattening out over the coming months,” Chessell admits. “So it's really critical for us – and no doubt other publishers – to provide a broad range of experiences and content that is going to keep engaging people and keep convincing them that there's value to a subscription.”

Chessell cites the New York Times pushing into “cooking and puzzles” while acquiring “nerdy sports publication” The Athletic in a bid to break out of its core news business as a broader macro trend. At a micro level, he points to Nine’s reinvestment in Good Food Guide events and hatted restaurant guide, plus TV and publishing spinoffs, likewise new “lifestyle content and lists” for the AFR. He hints at more to come.

“We have some pretty ambitious growth targets. If we stick purely to our knitting, we'll make that process more difficult. We need to expand and we need to look into new areas, diversification,” says Chessell. “But it has to fit around the core subscription business. You can't just be doing stuff for the sake of it.”

Battle of Brisbane?

Chessell also sees geographic growth opportunity for news – with Murdoch territory earmarked for significant additional resource.

“Southeast Queensland is one of the fastest growing parts of Australia. I think you'll see us do some interesting things in Brisbane... It's not a one newspaper town. The Courier Mail does a reasonable job, but there's always opportunities there,” he says.

Will it go head-to-head with a print edition?

“That would be unlikely. I think the Brisbane Times has done a really good job over a long period of time. It's more than ten years old now, but it's probably difficult for that masthead to take on its rivals with its current resourcing and being so tied to The Herald and Age.”

Clasby and Stepho smashing it

If media sales is a knife fight, Chessell reckons Nine is sticking it to rivals.

“The renaissance of Nine publishing over recent years has been the performance on the commercial side. It doesn't get the credit that it deserves: They've been knocking it out of the park – and as we speak, they're knocking it out of the park.”

Even with the economy facing headwinds and 2023 ad budgets under pressure?

“Yes. Everyone would accept that the market is probably shorter than they would like. There is uncertainty on the horizon when you look at global factors and at the interest rate environment in Australia. But if you look at the contribution – which is all on the public record – it's in the results of the commercial side of the business. They've done a really good job.”

Nine's publishing division posted pre-tax earnings of $179.5m in FY 22, up 53 per cent, inclusive of bargaining code cash. Exclusive of Google and Facebook's contribution the result was $144m, an increase of 23 per cent.

Chessell attributes growth to “giving the mastheads a bit more love and attention than they were previously given and introducing them to a wider range of clients”, via publishing sales boss Jo Clasby, group sales chief Michael Stephenson and the integration strategy now taking effect.

While he says reforms led by former Fairfax CEO Greg Hywood were instrumental in laying the foundations for the current publishing upturn, Fairfax at the time was too “pessimistic” about the future of print. “[Hywood] probably doesn't get the credit he deserves for [Nine publishing’s turn of fortune]. But I think he was a little premature on print.”

Mistrust buster

Chessell thinks those calling out news media as untrustworthy may also be mistaken.

Alongside The Guardian’s YouGov findings, Edelman’s 2021 trust barometer found media to be the least trusted institution, with the University of Canberra publishing similar findings.

“I scratch my head a little about those results. The Edelman methodology was pretty comprehensively, picked apart by Tony Boyd, the Chanticleer columnist; he's a pretty serious guy and the people he quotes in that are pretty serious people, so I don't put much stock in that,” says Chessell. “The University of Canberra one is a more interesting report, and I'm not naïve – people are more media literate, they are interested in the ownership of media, and I think in a world where there's a bit more polarisation, they're always looking for signs of ideology or bias.”

Which is why he says Nine’s mastheads “try to stay strictly to the centre” with Chessell frustrated by accusations that it can stray to either side. “We often say, well, it's just what happened and you don't need to like it.”

He accepts that there is a broader lack of trust in media, fuelled by fake news and “corrosive” social media.

“There is no doubt some scepticism out there, so I don't dismiss that at all. But in our experience, we've had pretty strong subscriber growth, we've had pretty strong audience growth,” says Chessell. “Any report by its nature has to generalise, and I think some of the higher quality mastheads may be caught up in that. But people wouldn’t pay for our journalism if there wasn’t an element of trust there.”