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One of Australia’s most successful progressive media proprietors, Morry Schwartz, is getting back on the tools.
The band behind Schwartz Media’s success is breaking up, as the company’s longstanding chief executive Rebecca Costello moves to a cross-town rival.
Flying back from Venice to take up what he describes as an executive chairman role, Schwartz will soon step back into the commercial side of the media business, which has grown from a fringe intellectual publishing outfit to a mainstream independent news organisation. It’s a task that he professes not to have much interest in, but will need to pick up until he finds a replacement for Costello.
“Obviously, I am a businessman, but when it comes to publishing, I really don’t care,” he says.
Schwartz Media editor-in-chief Erik Jensen, owner Morry Schwartz, and outgoing CEO Rebecca Costello.Credit: SMH
Schwartz, the eponymous founder, cuts a unique figure in a landscape dominated by far bigger players, particularly Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp and Nine’s titles (including this masthead), building his own empire off the back of a successful career in property development.
His media business, which houses The Saturday Paper, The Monthly and 7am podcast, has been run by Costello since 2006, working hand-in-hand for the past 12 years with Erik Jensen, who Schwartz hired to launch and edit The Saturday Paper aged just 23.
Costello leaves in a few weeks to become Guardian Australia’s managing director. While some companies might have fought to prevent such a move, Schwartz said: “I don’t believe in holding people back.”
The Saturday Paper, which went to print in March 2014, launched less than a year after Guardian Australia, both pitching themselves as the premier progressive voice in the market.
Jensen, now editor-in-chief across all Schwartz titles, puts a wider lens to it, saying The Saturday Paper today contends with The Australian, The Age and Sydney Morning Herald.
Meanwhile, Schwartz is more philosophical in his approach.
“I really think from the editorial side out. If I feel what we produce is good, and if people around me think it’s good, then I’m happy.”
Quality writing drives Schwartz, who takes a more active role in his publishing company Black Inc. – The Quarterly Essay being among its titles – highlights the recent Killing for Country book by David Marr as “an important contribution to the country”.
Driven by editorial rather than commercial imperatives, Schwartz’s publishing ambitions have been fruitfully nurtured by his property endeavours.
“The only way to do it was to make money elsewhere, so I made money in property. I don’t do much of it any more,” Schwartz said.
Launching The Saturday Paper in 2014, then-communications minister Malcolm Turnbull quipped Schwartz was “not some demented plutocrat pouring more and more money into a loss-making venture that is just going to peddle your opinions”. (Turnbull later denied this was reference to Rupert Murdoch, of whom Schwartz is a known critic.)
Rupert Murdoch is the subject of Schwartz’s new special podcast series.Credit: The New York Times
But despite the progressive bias, Schwartz is a believer in holding the line on centrism, calling it “a great place to aim for”, noting the company tries to publish everything with impartiality.
“We don’t opine on anything,” he said, though he has strong opinions on refugee policy, climate change, and, more recently, advocating for Yes in the Voice to parliament referendum.
“It feels that the country needs healing,” Schwartz said of the referendum’s result,“we will try to just promote decency and centrism.”
One knotty issue is Schwartz Media’s perceived hesitancy around the subject of Israel and Palestine.
“It’s highly complex, and highly emotional subject,” Schwartz said. “My life is private, and I keep it that way. I don’t think anyone really does know my positions. They’re complex,” he said.
“It’s not our prime objective to cover international news. We do it, but our primary objective is to cover Australian news. When big international events happen, of course we cover them as carefully as we can.”
November’s edition of the Jewish Quarterly, which Schwartz publishes, was set to be a 112-page critique of Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu by Isreali author and Netanyahu biographer Anshel Pfeffer, but Schwartz pulled it weeks before it was due to hit the shelves.
Schwartz denies the decision was related to heightened turmoil in the Middle East. He said the essay became out of date “because of all the judicial overhaul business [announced in Israel].”
November’s scrapped edition of Jewish Quarterly
A crucial departure
Costello, who has been crucial in driving Schwartz Media’s commercial product, leaves at an important time for independent media, with a depressed advertising market and consumers having less spare cash for subscription journalism.
The Saturday Paper pitches its reader profile as “premium” – those living in the inner city with an average age of 43, an average of $420,000 in savings or investments, and 82 per cent university educated – according to a 2022 media kit.
Roy Morgan figures show a monthly print readership of 285,000, with web and app readership of 435,000, while the high-flying podcast 7am, launched in 2019, is Australia’s top rating daily news podcast.
In September, it had just under 400,000 listeners and 1.25 million downloads, tapering off slightly from the podcast boom in the pandemic years.
Until a new CEO is appointed, Schwartz will be getting back into the day-to-day of the business.
“I get involved in general direction, we have meetings, we talk about society,” he said, but in terms of editorial, “you hire an editor, and you trust them”.
“I suppose I’ll be an executive chair for a bit.”
With a loyal audience, Schwartz said Costello had built the commercial product “beautifully”, with the business now in a “comfortable place”.
“When I think about the way in which our titles have succeeded, they’ve succeeded because of how they’ve told stories, and in that way, it really is quite simple,” Jensen said. “We believe completely in our journalists, and we believe completely in our audiences.”
As for Costello, she is just as philosophical as Schwartz on her exit.
“Seventeen years is 17 years,” she said. “I don’t own Schwartz, so that is a pretty amazing tenure in this day and age in any job in whatever industry, so for me, it was timing and opportunity and it all coming together at the right moment.”
Whoever he hires to replace Costello, Schwartz said the company would stick to its course.
“The Saturday Paper is very strongly into thoughtful long form, and that’s where it’ll stay.”
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