There’s an intriguing little piece by Jason Whittaker in Crikey‘s media briefs today, implying that Glenn Milne’s days as a columnist for the News Limited Sunday papers (and full time staffer) are over. I wonder what that signifies?
Glenn Milne boned from News? The automated email response from News Limited gallery hack Glenn Milne delivered the news: “Please be advised that as of the 13/03/2010 I no longer work for News Limited Sunday Papers, I still work for The Australian.” Milne is directing correspondents to a Gmail account, presumably because his role at News is now as Australian column contributor only.
So what’s happened? The veteran Canberra reporter had been dishing the political dirt for the Sunday tabloids — including The Sunday Telegraph, The Sunday Herald Sun and The Sunday Mail (Brisbane and Adelaide) — catching Kevin Rudd at a New York strip club, and swearing at MPs, exposing Greg Combet’s love life, uncovering Jan McLucas’ travel rorts and other salacious scoops prowling the halls of parliament house on Saturdays. It seems all that digging got too tiresome for the man Paul Keating dubbed the ‘The Poison Dwarf’ (and that was before his celebrated run-in with Crikey founder Stephen Mayne at the 2006 Walkley Awards). Milne couldn’t be reached for comment.
Crikey understands his replacement has already started work. Shaun Carney has defected from Fairfax — after almost 25 years at The Age — and last week announced to a shocked News Limited press suite he would now be filing for the Sunday titles. Fairfax didn’t respond to questions before deadline.
Carney was an associate editor and senior columnist with the Melbourne newspaper. He’s written two books, including a biography on federal Treasurer Peter Costello — ironic given Milne was seen as Costello’s biggest supporter in the press gallery.
Update: Correction from Crikey – Simon Kearney not Shaun Carney.
“Unwept, unhonoured and unsung”.
His stature has been reduced even further.
No doubt nothing will change until the editorial policy changes but I can’t help but celebrate the departure of another Liberal stooge.
A height joke? Oh come on.
Never rated the geezer
So, when you’re no longer good enough for the Tele you get pastured out to the Oz. Makes a lot of sense now.
Guys,
We buggered this up. Milne has definitely left the News Limited stable, but his replacement is NOT The Age’s Shaun Carney. Our source confused the names.
Would appreciate if you could correct this on your website as we have done on ours.
Thanks,
Jason Whittaker
Deputy Editor | Crikey.com.au
JWhittaker@crikey.com.au
On the poison dwarf’s successor, Shaun Carney is best described as an earnest plodder with no original thoughts at all.
Yes but has Tony Abbott ever confided in Shaun Carney about life in the seminary?
He was probably sacked for not knowing what a Comma Splice is.
I find the derogatory use of ‘dwarf’ to be a bit off. (Well, a lot off, actually.)
Besides, he’s much more aptly labelled a ‘tosser’
Not Shaun Carney. Crikey now says Simon Kearney in clarification.
So will he still be an Insider, and continue to ruin my Sunday mornings?
Corrected!
Milne will now be an Outsider, or perhaps an Offsider.
While you are it Kim, you’ve mispelled dwarf.
I’ll fix that too, Sam! But that’s in the quote, not my bit. I should ask Crikey for payment for retrospective sub-editing duties!
Mercurius,
How about “Dwarf Tosser”?
Those were the days…
I saw the little guy at Melbourne Airport. Seemed to have an air of importance about him. I didn’t know why then, and I don’t now.
I’m with Merc. I don’t think the dwarf jokes are particularly savoury.
What can you do? That’s what Keating called him.
Yeah. But it doesn’t mean people have to reiterate it, or compete with each other to think up variations on it.
Poor
littlefella’s life work went down the tubes when Costello decided he wouldn’t take one for the team and stay for a guaranteed couple of years as leader. And Costello dumping on the Monk for being a tax`n’spend unLiberal this week must have been a bit too much like a personal betrayal for Milne’s liking, what with it coming right after the black one had finally suppressed what little was left of his dignity to jump onto the Abbott-fer-chrissakes bandwagon.So it’s the other Shaun Carney, eh?
If so, quite right too.
Someone’ll probably have to sack me as well then, PC. Does knowledge of the Pythagorean Comma count? Or Vanilla Splice?
My understanding, DI(nr), is that (unlike the P. D.) you are not a professional journalist; if I’m right, then you are under no particular obligation to learn the tricks, techniques and terminologies of the scribe trade, including the finer points of punctuation, unless you happen to feel like it.
Comma splice.
Was Milne sacked for his disclosure of “confidences” in relation to a reference to Abbott’s seminary days on Insiders on Sunday? He seemed to be implying that Tony Abbott had experienced something which has had a continued influence on him although he did not say so directly, but in his inimitable style allowed the inference to run. Barry Cassidy asked him whether he knew something to be true and he replied “Yes”. I’m not repeating here exactly what he said because with Milne we can never be sure why he says what he says, although I usually assume a degree of nastiness attached to his statements.
He does not appear to have been released from his exceedingly well-paying gig with The Australian – we can only live in hope.
Go easy Phil. He’s just retiring to specialise at a class joynt.
Remember the OZ is….
“the only truly vibrant, intelligent newspaper in the country.”
said Sophie Black…. Crikey Ed.
Or was that a Crikey mistake, as well?
Good riddance. Milne’s columns in the Brisbane Sunday Mail grew increasingly tiresome as it become increasingly obvious he was simply parroting the Liberal Party agitprop du jour. It’s one thing to be biased; it’s another to be boring about it.
A political journo’s stock-in-trade is the quality and number of their “insider” political contacts, from which to report tasty tid-bits and break stories nobody else can. Suddenly, none of Milne’s contacts mattered, and he hadn’t bothered to do any of the spade-work and glad-handing necessary to cultivate replacements, so all he was left with was gnashing of teeth and making shit up. The non-actions of a fellow looking for a not-so-early retirement.
What’s the deal with Greg Combet’s love life? Missed that one – thought he was happily married and devoted to her.
Will this be Australian journalisms’ loss or
Merely the demise of another toxic tosser?
Poor Glenn. Spent the better half of a quarter of a century auditioning to be Prime Minister Costello’s press secretary and, now that ship has sailed, he’s looking like the tird old has been that he always was
I quite like Shaun Carney but I hope his defection to News Ltd won’t mean a deterioration in his quality of work. Sadly I think I may be a little too hopeful here -people who get swallowed up by the Murdoch press rarely keep their journalistic professionalism. Just look at the Australian
Yes. What’s with that? He is a thoroughly decent person and should not have a low-life attack on his personal affairs, whatever they are.
C’mon, someone put up a link to You Tube from that infamous night at the Walkleys – it never stops being funny.
Ginja @ 33:
Here ya go! (Some things should not be forgotten.)
The Toxic Tosser is actually Combet’s pre-natal love child (it’s seriously complicated, with a shitload of causality violation involved): that’s why the Toxic Tosser is so anti-Labor. Basically it’s Oedipal rage.
So….which Lib is he going to end up with as their press secretary? Surely that’s the only reason for him leaving yes?
That is so good@34! It’s hard to get enough of. The furious penguin may yet have a career with Dancing With The Stars.
Oh the joys of You Tube. Now I can go for a Saturday morning constitutional stroll in complete peace of mind.
All part of the overall pathetic political coverage in this country. “Our” ABC about the worst offender; line ‘em up with the commercial networks and you have exactly the greatest load of drivel you could ever hope not to see or hear!!
I’m not sure Glenn Milne necessarily “chose” to leave News Ltd. The Australian has a lot of comment on the payroll for a paper with 130,000 circulation.
Gummo, what on earth does “pre-natal love child” mean?
But thanks for the YouTube link. They say schadenfreude is best described as that feeling when you see a BMW collide with a Mercedes. Is there a similar word when a twat like Milne collides with a prat like Mayne?
Thanks Gummo…..yep, still funny.
Now if you want to get it rollin’
with some in-de-pen-dent clauses.
Drop the comma and use a col’n,
to punctuate your pauses.
And there’ll never never be compunction,
conjuction.
[Take it away the Strunk & White Big Band!]
I think people counted their chickens before hatching here. The delightful Mr. Milne is still appearing in The Australian, basing tenuous “stories” around leaking private conversations among MPs – in this case about Joe Hockey – and still championing the causes of Christopher Pyne and Peter Dutton as Liberal leaders, in the now (very much fading) hope that he may get a job with a leader as their Media Officer.
Apparently Glenn Milne is now Mayor of Mildura and proposing locust-topped pizza …
The idea for the pizza was the brainchild of Mayor Glenn Milne, who rounded up the insects and trapped them in a garbage bag