The Australian culture section loses Stephen Romei; Newsmax Australia is dead; Annabel Crabb’s Civic Duty on ABC; and David Speers’ Insiders
Opinion
Updated ,first published
Updated ,first published
In this week’s On Background, the plot thickens as The Australian’s film critic is dumped, the grand plan for a Sky News challenger is dead, we tally Insiders’ favourite guests and reveal the cost of shooting television in the United States.
Killing season continues for The Oz’s culture vultures
When The Australian went on a press offensive in October to announce it was launching a new culture section, long-serving film critic Stephen Romei was front and centre in the photoshoot and glossy video introducing the seven-person team.
The Oz went big, spending to promote the launch across outdoor advertising, online, print and social media. With Romei part of the core team, he would also be fronting a new video series alongside award-winning author and columnist Nikki Gemmell. They would be “disagreeing agreeably” as they reviewed a different film each week.
Fast-forward to January and we revealed Gemmell had been parachuted into the culture section full-time and handed the title of chief film critic after her column was dumped from The Weekend mag.
For the past few editions, Romei (who has held that “chief film critic” title at various times) and Gemmell shared a double billing in the film review section.
But as is the case in all good films, not every one gets a happy ending.
Three months from that photoshoot and Romei has been the latest cultural veteran to be given the boot at The Australian, following former broadcaster and author Phillip Adams out the door.
It turns out that Romei, who has spent the best part of the past 15 years as film critic, was dumped a few weeks into the new year. Sources familiar with the matter said it was a financial decision, while other sources referenced a broader change in the team.
“I’m not sure what’s happened. All I know is the managing editor [Darren Davidson] phoned to tell me my services were no longer required. My final film reviews for The Australian are scheduled to run on February 21,” Romei told On Background.
Romei said he wanted to thank all who have read his reviews in the past 15 years, whether they agreed with him or not.
“I plan to continue writing about film in other publications, and via a Substack account, so I hope, to paraphrase Claude Rains in Casablanca, that the friendship continues.”
It’s certainly an odd one, considering the cultural clout Romei has held for the paper as a 40-odd year veteran of News Corp. In his most recent stint as a film critic, Romei worked with the late, great film writer David Stratton and his colleague held in similar regard, Evan Williams. But Romei’s association with the paper goes far beyond that, as its former literary editor, and foreign correspondent, including as its New York correspondent at the time of the 9/11 attack.
It’s evident The Australian’s editors knew his brand mattered too, given how prominently they used his image to help launch the new section just three months ago.
From what we can tell online, that new video series featuring Romei and Gemmell published a grand total of two episodes, a review of One Battle After Another in September (before the announcement) and that of the new Jacob Elordi-led Frankenstein in late October.
A spokesperson for The Australian declined to comment.
Newsmax Australia is dead. Long live Newsmax Australia
Newsmax Australia – remember that? That was the ambitious plan announced more than a year ago to relaunch Alan Jones’ old, fringe conservative digital TV station ADH TV under the MAGA-loving banner in 2025.
But, like everything else the boys behind ADH have done so far (trying to buy Nine radio and regional TV stations from Southern Cross Media), it has officially fallen over, with the site’s Australian link now redirecting to Newsmax’s American URL.
It’s a feat of incredible timing. One Nation is surging in the polls, the hard right is on the march internationally, and the media is fragmenting online, but somehow Newsmax didn’t work out.
It’s sad news for the men behind ADH: former ABC chair Maurice Newman, former 7News Sydney news director and former 2GB host Jason Morrison, and urban planner and ADH’s chief executive Jack Bulfin, now a veteran of the industry while still in his mid-20s.
We asked a couple of the old hosts and one was kind enough to tell On Background: “The Newsmax thing is dead sadly. The owner couldn’t see the model making a profit and went after 2GB.”
The big question behind the Newsmax venture was whether there was Gina Rinehart money behind it. Morrison is a former advisor to Australia’s richest woman, who is known as much for her frequent visits to Mar-a-Lago and passion for the media as she is her mining interests.
When we made inquiries last year, the word was Rinehart turned down the opportunity to invest, or even advertise on the platform.
So the better question now looks like whether there was any meaningful money behind Newsmax Australia at all.
We contacted international Newsmax boss Christopher Ruddy, as well as the local ADH honchos, and camp Rinehart, but didn’t hear back.
Newsmax Australia wasn’t the only small publisher to go down in recent months. The local edition of Cosmopolitan is set to close its doors after publisher KK Press folded this week, and Business News Australia, a start-up and entrepreneurship site, called it quits a couple of weeks back.
ABC’s high-flyers
The belt might be getting tightened at The Australian, but things are all right for top talent at Aunty.
Numbers released this week showed the cost of expenses for an eight-day trip to the US by presenter Annabel Crabb for her new show Civic Duty, which premiered in November.
The show, a three-part docuseries about Australia’s democratic system, was aired in November and showed Crabb in Washington, Tennessee and Denmark, of all places.
The cost of the US leg turned out to be quite the sum, priced at $22,311. For context, the full cost to send Michael Rowland, Sarah Ferguson and David Speers to cover the US election in late 2024 was $36,838.
Crabb’s bill included $3504.65 for flights to and from America, $3637.80 for accommodation, $5855.65 for travel within the US and $3014 for travel allowance. An American associate producer assisting Crabb and her team accounted for $US4422.75 ($6347) of the overall bill.
At least the production was pretty well rated, garnering 950,000 views across its first seven days on TV and ABC iview.
An ABC spokesperson said :“Civic Duty is an important three-part documentary about the unique nature of Australian democracy that required travel to provide global context. Annabel was accompanied by a crew to the US where several interviews were conducted in various cities and used across all three episodes. Travel and accommodation was within ABC travel guidelines.”
We don’t doubt Crabb’s trip was within the rules, but perhaps the ABC should check if she shares high-flying Sports Minister Anika Wells’ travel agent.
Playing favourites
Speaking of Speers, more data revealed last week as part of a tranche of senate estimates questions on notice shows the ABC is, believe it or not, actually pretty even-handed when it comes to booking political guests for flagship political sofa-show Insiders.
Its own stable of journalists took the cake with a grand total of 50 appearances across the 2025 calendar year, led by seven appearances from Jacob Greber, formerly of the AFR. Journalists from across Nine television and mastheads The Age, Sydney Morning Herald and AFR followed on 43, while News Corp’s mastheads tallied 21.
But it was a News Corp journalist, news.com.au’s award-winning political editor Samantha Maiden, who topped the pile with 11 appearances across the year. Maiden was followed by Phillip Coorey, political editor of the AFR, this masthead’s Paul Sakkal and former Guardian political editor and now independent journalist Karen Middleton.
For those checking the figures, we lumped columnists like Niki Savva (SMH, The Age) in with the masthead their copy runs in, but ranked Waleed Aly separately as he also appears on the ABC.
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Calum Jaspan is a media writer for The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age, based in Melbourne. Reach him securely on Signal @calumjaspan.10Connect via X or email.
