Au revoir for ABC luminaries while Leunig lays into the Age | Weekly Beast

It was a week of goodbyes at the ABC as Fran Kelly farewelled her loyal audience after 17 years and outgoing news chief Gaven Morris highlighted much-needed improvements in diversity as a source of pride during his six-year tenure.

Morris told the Melbourne Press Club that ABC News was setting the standard for reflecting the full diversity of modern Australia in its workforce and content.

Earlier in the week Campanella revealed on air that she was pregnant.

Swan Hill, Whyalla, Victor Harbor, Northam and Gladstone will get their own dedicated ABC reporters in 2022, thanks to multimillion-dollar deals the ABC has signed with Google and Facebook.

They will be part of an influx of more than 50 new regional reporters to be hired by the broadcaster, a 10% increase in the regional content-maker team.

This week the ABC inked a deal with Facebook, to add to its money from Google, under the news media bargaining code which became law in February.

Reaction on Twitter to the appointment of Bevan Shields as editor of the Sydney Morning Herald this week was not uniformly celebratory. Quite a few people pointed out that Shields had blocked them, and some had no idea why.

The increasingly pointed attacks on the ABC chair, Ita Buttrose, which are often sexist in nature, were raised this week in Senate estimates by Sarah Hanson-Young as she questioned Senator Jane Hume, who was representing the communications minister, Paul Fletcher.

Hume rejected the suggestion.

Leunig is unabashed and posted the drawing on his personal Instagram account instead.

No wonder they broke up.

Christian Kerr, who with Stephen Mayne co-founded Crikey,died in his sleep this week aged 56.

Kerr, a former political lobbyist, was a trailblazer in the 1990s, before social media and blogging, with an emailed must-read political column under the pen name Hillary Bray.