Newsmakers with John McDuling

Kate Watson

Psst: This is penultimate Newsmaker episode. We finish next week with the one and only Leigh Sales.

Introducing this week’s Newsmaker: John McDuling from Capital Brief

John McDuling is the editor-in-chief of Capital Brief. He was previously the national business editor at the Sydney Morning Herald/The Age and has also worked for the Financial Review and US publication Quartz.

Capital Brief has been in operation for nearly a year and has 20ish journalists on its books. Its founders include Chris Janz and David Eisman - both former executives at Nine Entertainment. It’s been described as ambitious - some think overly so.

Regardless of your view, they’re certainly having a red hot crack.

You can listen to the full podcast interview, click on the image below to watch the chat, or scroll down for an edited transcript. 

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John McDuling on Capital Brief and covering the new economy…

Kate Watson: How do you determine what’s a Capital Brief story? What's the tone and the mission of the business?

John McDuling: We say we want to be a publication for decision-makers in the new economy. We think there's been a generational shift in Australian business, and it hasn’t been adequately or fully captured by the existing media. So we often tell stories about founder-led businesses in Australia attacking global markets and fast-growing business models, often involving new technologies and that kind of thing…There's a tendency in Australian newspaper journalism to have this kind of thunderous news approach. If you've ever read a newsletter splash, the front page of the story can be very…

KW: …sensational? 

JMc: Yeah. They’re really good journalists doing really good work. It's just when you're selling a story in a piece of print real estate, you need a big, bold headline and a strong, dramatic opening paragraph with lots of adjectives. And we have tried not to do it that way. We've said that we sort of break stories down, and we don't beat them up. We try to write with a slightly more understated tone and let the stories sell themselves. At least, that's the intention. 

KW: As I understand it, Capital Brief's ability to break stories is considered necessary for its success. The question for me is around you as the editor - how do you make that call? 

JMc: It’s one of the hardest challenges balancing that. Breaking news is really, really hard  - you've got to give credit to the publications out there that do break a lot of news. We've just tried to focus on areas that aren't being covered and where we have strengths. We think there's a generational shift in Australian business and these emerging industries and entrepreneurs behind them. For us, that's kind of the core of our publication. So we've been able to report some of those situations and companies rigorously. One of the biggest stories we had was about an executive departure at Canva, one of the biggest startups in Australia, which kind of hasn't faced rigorous scrutiny so far...

KW: Because it's done so incredibly well?

JMc: Exactly, but it's a maturing company, and they're headed towards a very big IPO. It is already one of Australia's biggest companies, but it's always been treated as this thing over on the side. There's a perception that Australian business is, you know, men in suits and boardroom tables, and these companies in Australia have been around for 100 years, and some of them were spun out of the government. And we think there's a new generation of businesses that deserve to have their stories told as well. And they're becoming powerful companies and they deserve some kind of scrutiny. That's what we're trying to bring to the table. 

KW: And that's what you mean by the new economy?

JMc: That's exactly what we mean. There's a new generation of companies that are really rising to leadership roles across the economy. There's also just a generational shift across the economy completely. Millennials are now in their 40s and in the C-suite, senior figures in government, billionaires, and all that kind of thing. They're becoming a really important cohort in the economy. They're also a very big cohort within the economy. We want to tell the story of Australian business through their eyes. The big companies that we all think about - the CBAs and the BHPs - are very important, and we report on them all the time. But I think there's a difference in mindset between how they see the world and how the Canvas and the Atlassians do.

KW: What is that difference?

JMc: Well, in raw political terms, this new economy generation tends to be a bit more progressive. They tend to operate in global markets, so they think globally rather than say - we're a domestic monopoly or oligopoly, and we're sheltered by regulation. And there's just a different perspective on fast-growing companies rather than mature companies. So they're concerned about hiring people, and they're concerned about where they unlock talent from. They have a different perspective on immigration policy issues and those kinds of things than some other companies do. 

Tell us what you think…

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