Made by our real-life designer, Zennie (Image: Private Media) Crikey ’s first-ever edition arrived in inboxes on Valentine’s Day, February 14, 2000. It included a reflection on Lachlan Murdoch from his former philosophy tutor, pseudonymous insider gossip from the former political staffer Christian Kerr, and lists of journalists who’d previously worked in politics. There was a profile of Rupert Murdoch lieutenant Col Allan titled “Pissing in the Sink”.
From our inception, we have been so very Crikey . There are a lot of things that make up Crikey ness, but central is its humanness. Like most people, we want to cut through the bullshit, know how the world and power works, hear the gossip, tell stories, take the piss and have fun.
We write the way we wish other people would write, which is the way we talk to each other, for our readers. In the near quarter-century of dispatches — during which newsletters went from being cool, to cringe, back to cool and is now swinging back towards cringe again — Crikey has remained remarkably consistent because our job didn’t change. We didn’t pivot to iPad or video .
We just kept doing the same old Crikey : having people write about people for other people. Fundamentally, this is what we think journalism is about. But there is a threat to this philosophy.
Artificial intelligence, specifically advances in generative AI, has been the defining tech trend of the past 18-odd months. Every industry has been experimenting with how t.