So long and farewell from The Mayne Report
January 30, 2017
Dear 13,700 Mayne Report readers,
It is our melancholy duty to inform you that this is our final email edition of The Mayne Report which will be closing at 8am tomorrow morning. No more emails, no more website and no public archive of the past 9-plus years! All gone. No more.
The main reason is that our content management system provider, Lagado, who we go back with to the very early days of Crikey in 2000, are withdrawing their service. I eked a few extra months out of them but we are their last legacy client on their oldest system which costs them plenty even after we pay them more than $4000 a year.
There's no bad blood. They've given plenty of notice and we could have transferred to a different provider or built a new wordpress site and shifted the email service to Mailchimp or Campaign Monitor. However, given the volume of content they are hosting, this would have been a big task for a venture which has no revenue beyond event-driven donations. Therefore, we've gone instead with the closure option and a clean break to pursue new opportunities.
This is what is currently on The Mayne Report content management system.
Articles: 3,440
Words in articles: 3.9 million
Audio files: 1,855
PDF files: 1,024
Email editions: 355
(there are also 281 videos on our Youtube channel.)
We've got access to all of this content on DVDs and will be able to re-purpose it as required over time, but it won't be coming back as The Mayne Report in anything like its current form. A re-brand under some different stewardship is not out of the question, if there's interest.
A brief potted history of The Mayne Report
When burying a media outlet in these tough times for journalists, you should try to give a factual account of what happened.
The Mayne Report was initially a 50-50 partnership with Paul Bendat, the model being a daily video blog, plus some Crikey-style email content focused on shareholder activism. We overlooked the fact that I had what they describe in the trade as "a good head for radio".
Here are links to some of the videos we made in the early years, which will remain available on Youtube, partly because I don't know the password to The Mayne Report Youtube channel which hasn't been changed in 6 years:
Extracting an apology from Rupert over Glenn Milne assault
The Macquarie Model a dead parrot
Taking on CNBC's Jim Cramer
Interviewing Nick Xenophon ahead of 2010 Victorian election
Rupert versus Macquarie on defamation battle over Michael West
Skewering the Oxiana-Zinifex merger
Bruce Teele's gag at AFIC AGM
Setting the scene for Rupert battle in NYC
Timbercorp tanks
Babcock & Brown tanks
Phil Green's Babcock mea culpa at final AGM
Phil Green, Max Green and Bill Lewski
Babcock beats Macquarie on fee disclosure
Who owns the Australian farm?
Evicted from outside the HWT offices
Qantas, the TWU and good governance
Why don't Rich Listers look after retail with SPPs after placements?
That launch article in The Australian talked about The Mayne Report being a competitor to the institutional proxy advisers and the Australian Shareholders' Association, but in the end it was a bit of everything spanning business, politics, media, shareholder activism and local government.
Paul Bendat had lots of television and radio experience, both in his own right and from working with his father, Jack Bendat, who spent a couple of decades as Kerry Stokes' main business partner in Perth.
He had just moved from the US to Melbourne and we met on June 28, 2006 at a Melbourne Press Club lunch featuring Rich Lister and media buyer Harold Mitchell. My beloved Paula Piccinini remembers the date well because it was her birthday and she didn't particularly rate lunch at the Docklands stadium listening to Harold as the greatest way to celebrate that milestone.
The following 5 months was consumed by the disaster that was the start-up political party People Power which ran about 50 candidates in the November 2006 Victorian election but bombed badly, burning around 40k of the Crikey sale proceeds in the process.
However, Paula did land her seat on the RACV board during this People Power fiasco, something which may not have happened if we hadn't been focused on contested elections and collected most of the 25 RACV member signatures required for nomination at a People Power event. Paula does regard this defence of People Power as putting lipstick on a pig, but I digress.
Juggling Crikey non-compete with Mayne Report launch
Once the dust had settled on the dysfunctional People Power experiment, early 2007 was spent getting ready to launch The Mayne Report.
The $1 million Crikey sale occurred on March 9, 2005 and the wide-ranging 4-year non-compete agreement with Private Media Partners ran until March 2009. This ended up being quite a constraint on The Mayne Report but was perfectly fair in the circumstances. A deal is a deal.
Limited relief was negotiated with the new Crikey owners Eric Beecher and Di Gribble but we were restricted from emailing more than 500 people at once and also had to continue filing every day for Crikey, which meant it wasn't possible to focus exclusively on The Mayne Report. However, at least those Crikey articles produced some revenue and a little cross-promotion too.
The public announcement of the new venture was done through this story by Nick Tabakoff in The Australian's Media section on September 6, 2007. (There is nothing on our closure in today's Media section in The Australian!)
This was followed by a trip to New York for the October 19 News Corp AGM, as this goofy video scene-setter outlines. It was a successful venture with $5 billion worth of stock supporting our shareholder resolution (see p18 of this document) to end Rupert's voting gerrymander. I also recorded a video outside Kevin Rudd's favourite New York strip club announcing a tilt against Peter Costello in his seat of Higgins at the November 24 Federal election. Out there immersion journalism - combining activism, elections and commentary - was going to be a Mayne Report theme, like the early days of Crikey.
Partnership over before it began
Paul Bendat and I then had a disagreement over launch timing with Paul wanting certain administrative matters sorted before going live with the flash website. Having announced the Costello tilt, I wanted to quickly unveil the new website which Paul had commissioned and paid for, rather than prolonging use of the Youtube channel and a black and white stop-gap website.
Paul then decided to amicably exit before launch, although we've remained good buddies since. He moved brilliantly into the pokies advocacy space and was also the biggest backer of last year's tilt against Kevin Andrews, whose campaigns have received strong support from pokies interests.
In hindsight, perhaps we should never have launched at all but the current Mayne Report website went live in early November 2007. We were quickly burning plenty of cash with three staff and a nanny and only a few $500 subscriptions. The travel bill also ran to tens of thousands over the years. Unlike Youtube, the initial video hosting contract cost tens of thousands. This wasn't such a concern in the early days as I had a fair bit invested in the share market which also peaked in early November 2007. Paula was also back at the bar as a family law barrister and we had her RACV gig to help keep us going, plus modest funding from Crikey articles and the odd paid speech.
However, with Paul Bendat off the scene, I was a words guy who had two skilled video editors, Colin Chee and Shane Marden, coming in to the home office every day and working alongside office manager Gabi Byrne, who is also a well-known anti-pokies campaigner.
The video guys weren't overly busy using their skills, so when the sharemarket started to crater in 2008, we picked up a contract helping New McPherson Media produce in-house videos for Myer. It wasn't long before Colin Chee then went full-time with New McPherson in February 2009, leaving Shane Marden to handle all of our multi-media work solo for the next two years. Both were very impressive and hard working individuals who helped effectively build a massive library of everything we'd done.
Peaking in 2008
2008 was the biggest year for The Mayne Report when we produced a whopping 172 email editions, but also pumped out 264 Crikey stories to satisfy the waiver agreement to the non-compete. Throw in attending a record 63 AGMs, generating dozens of videos and doing almost 100 ABC radio spots and we were going hard at it. No wonder the $20,000 January 2008 contract with Rupert's Harper Collins publishing division never materialised into the promised memoir. All this happened as the stock market was crashing courtesy of the GFC. It was a bit like launching Crikey at the peak of the boom in February 2000 just three months before the Dotcom crash.
Then, just 3 months before the Crikey non-compete was due to end, I accidentally got myself elected onto Manningham City Council in November 2008. Whilst exciting at one level, this also meant The Mayne Report was never given my undivided attention. The brilliant Colin Chee then exited in February 2009 and we also stopped taking paid subscriptions at this point as there would have been a potential conflict with Manningham people having to pay to see what was being said.
Importantly, with The Mayne Report closing, no one will be able to say there is any confusion or conflict of interest with other activities such as being on the ASA board, contributing to Crikey or serving as a councillor.
Capital raising windfalls provide lifeline to The Mayne Report
We'd paid off the mortgage with the Crikey sale proceeds but the operating costs of The Mayne Report, combined with sharemarket losses of more than $100,000 putting together the world's biggest small share portfolio at the top of the market, meant the surplus cash was largely gone when the sharemarket bottomed in March 2009.
I'd literally just started to liquidate the portfolio in February 2009 when Wesfarmers came along with a heavily discounted non-renounceable capital raising at $13.50. Retail shareholders were entitled to apply for "overs" to pick up the shortfall from non-participants and with the shares up around $17 on the last day, I borrowed $200,000 from a mate and threw the kitchen sink at the overs.
Wesfarmers scaled back the overs to a maximum of 1000 shares but this still produced a quick profit of $3200. What followed was an avalanche of similar offers and suddenly the world's biggest small share portfolio was able to keep funding The Mayne Report courtesy of circa 300k in gross profits playing the margins of capital raisings over the following few years. Every play is detailed in full here but 2009 was easily the biggest year with the monthly gross profits flowing as follows, helping pay for indulgences such as an $8000 40th birthday party dinner at the RACV Club:
March 2009: $10,170 profit
April 2009: $36,996 profit
May 2009: $31,639 profit
June 2009: $86,600 profit
July 2009: $28,293 profit
August 2009: $12,758 profit
September 2009: $32,229 profit
October 2009: $8901 profit
November 2009: $16,800 profit
Regardless of capital raising profits, there still was the issue of The Mayne Report sustaining staff and having no revenue, unless you argued the content assisted with capital raising outcomes. In November 2009, after 12 months on council, I ran for mayor of Manningham but lost 5-4 to the Labor incumbent Charles Pick. Success would have seen The Mayne Report put on hold for the next 12 months, potentially never returning.
As it happened, divisions at Manningham exploded from that point on and it proved a major distraction from running The Mayne Report which by this time had no direct revenue except for event-driven donations such as funding for the annual trip to New York to tackle Rupert Murdoch.
We we were still burning plenty of cash as we had two full-time staff so Paula and I agreed this would come to an end after the Victorian election in November 2010, which represented "the last chance saloon" in terms of getting elected to a full time political gig. Our youngest Philip had gone into prep in 2010 so it was getting hard to justify a full-time nanny who also helped out a little on The Mayne Report.
The Australian Shareholders' Association then unexpectedly advertised for a CEO in September 2010 so I applied for that role, offering to close The Mayne Report and resign from City of Manningham. The two person ASA board sub-committee didn't even tell the full board their one-man-band competitor had applied to be CEO. Subsequently, I successfully ran for the ASA board in May 2011 as part of a plan to scale back The Mayne Report's shareholder advocacy and instead work institutionally on creating a stronger culture of shareholder pressure through the ASA.
Almost securing Victorian balance of power
The Mayne Report website and email list had always been somewhat of a platform for election campaigns, available to be wheeled out when required. Similarly, it was also a convenient fall-back option for journalism and commentary. If Crikey or any other freelance outlet declined to run a submitted piece, you could quickly pump out a Mayne Report edition to get your point out there.
Arguably the cleverest political tactic we managed was a two-election preference deal with The Greens and Family First in 2010. Senator Steve Fielding and then perennial election loser Richard Di Natale were both desperate to crack the Senate at the 2010 Federal election, so Paula and I ran as independents and split our first preference equally between both of them. In return, both parties agreed in writing to preference me first in the Victoria upper house region of Northern Metropolitan at the subsequent state election.
With these preferences in the bag, I knew that a primary vote of 1.5% would be enough to land a 4 year gig in the Victorian upper house. The execution wasn't good enough and we only polled 0.97%, but still went very close. In hindsight, with those amazing preferences deals in place, we should have thrown more resources and people at that campaign. We still did plenty, as this video demonstrates, but the winning deal would have been to negotiate an upper house endorsement on fellow independent Phil Cleary's how to vote card in the lower house seat of Brunswick. He polled 12% and was silent on how his supporters should have voted in Northern Metropolitan.
That would have been 4 years of Victorian balance of power in my own right and fulfillment of a dream to try and be the Nick Xenophon of Victoria. Considering the breadth of governance reforms that was leveraged out of 4 years with balance of power at City of Melbourne, who knows what could have come from a similar role in the Victorian upper house?
Alas, it wasn't to be, so our two remaining staff, Shane and Maria, were let go at the end of 2010 and a low-cost version of The Mayne Report limped along for the next 6 years.
Effectively, the site has been on care and maintenance since then but has always been available for various campaigns. It certainly helped during the state by-election for the seat of Melbourne in 2012, which in turn assisted in getting elected to City of Melbourne later that year, again thanks to a multi-election preference agreement with the Greens.
Similarly, it was largely The Mayne Report community which delivered 124 donations totaling almost $40,000 to take on Kevin Andrews in Menzies last year.
However, there were quiet periods as well, particularly during the two years from 2012 until 2014 when I was juggling the twin responsibilities of being a City of Melbourne councillor and the paid position of Policy and Engagement Co-ordinator at the ASA. We only published a combined 35 email editions in the 4 years to the end up 2015 - compared with 172 in 2008.
It ultimately had to end some time but the timing of this closure was driven by the irrevocable withdrawal of service by our patient content management system provider. Therefore, the time has now come to permanently put The Mayne Report to bed and focus on other endeavors.
What to do with all those lists
With the website fading to black tomorrow, there are a few issues to sort out.
You may have noticed Friday's special edition chronicling all the lists we've been involved with over the years. These matter as they represent hundreds of hours of researched and crowd-sourced material. Most of it is quite original too.
That is why the 200-plus Mayne Report lists are the saddest loss in terms of content being removed tomorrow from the public domain.
However, as was outlined on Friday, some of the early versions are currently available in the Crikey archive and discussions are continuing with Crikey about cranking this up in the future, including converting some of the existing Mayne Report lists and generating some completely new lists.
The majority of the existing Mayne Report lists are related to shareholder advocacy, AGMs and business material, which would make more sense to sit with the Australian Shareholders' Association or some other proxy advisory, funds management or business research house. We'll work hard to make that happen.
Sad to see the AGM audio go
The other sad loss from public view is all that edited AGM audio between October 2007 and December 2010, when the last of our two multi-media managers departed.
We were ahead of our time getting into AGM videos and audio, something which the mainstream media has rarely produced and even the ASA has not yet tapped into.
I've been doing a few "from the audio archive" tweets in recent days. Have a listen to some of these AGM exchanges before they disappear:
Challenging Ten's executive chair Nick Falloon for avoiding election
Getting into Woolworths for censoring plaform and using no vacancy rort
Tackling the blokey billionaires who run Reece over gender issues
Telling Roger Corbett to stop holding Fairfax AGMs at Packer's casino
Asking Rupert about phone hacking in 2010
Successfully persuading Transfield to do an SPP
Pitching for MAP board against Max the Axe Moore-Wilton
Looking back, I really was quite a smart-alec at some of those AGMs. No wonder some people don't forgive or forget.
ASA secures fabulous CEO
Whilst the ASA directors weren't interested in taking on Mayne Report content or services when the issue was raised last year, things are moving along nicely at the peak body for retail shareholders. It is terrific news that the ASA has secured Judith Fox as CEO, commencing on February 27. Judith has run policy at the Governance Institute for a decade but has a wide range of skills and connections that will help transform ASA. It will be an exciting time to be involved as an ASA director with a top gun CEO now at the helm.
Hanging in at City of Melbourne
On the City of Melbourne front, it has now been three months since the desk was cleared, but The Mayne Report won't be around to update you on how the final chapter finishes.
There will be a one-day VCAT hearing on February 21 to determine the replacement for Brooke Wandin, who was declared a City of Melbourne councillor but then withdrew. Brooke and defeated Labor councillor Richard Foster are due to face the Magistrate's court this week. The cover story of this week's CBD News has all the latest information on that saga, including the surprising revelation that Lord Mayor Robert Doyle personally called Victorian Electoral Commissioner Warwick Gately on November 9 and December 6.
Some of us have been a little surprised to see the Commissioner so aggressively pursuing a course of action through the courts that will remove Phil Cleary's Councillor, QVM trader Michael Caiafa, and give Team Doyle a majority through the election of former deputy lord mayor Susan Riley.
Watching these issues from afar, I'm personally relaxed about moving on from City of Melbourne but decidedly uncomfortable about the idea of a Doyle majority in these controversial circumstances. Hence, the decision to actively participate at the VCAT hearing on February 21 and potentially get back on council if the Supreme Court judge (Garde) hearing the matter decides to eliminate the entire Brooke Wandin ticket from the count.
As these orders after the late December VCAT directions hearing attest, I've been joined as a party and will probably self-represent on February 21. We've been given an extension until February 3 to file our response to the VEC materials which were distributed to the parties on January 6. See here for the submission I worked up for the Directions hearing but didn't end up providing to the senior member. There's only a 20% chance of getting back on City of Melbourne but we'll give it a go and I can't really settle on any major "next steps" until this is resolved.
What next after The Mayne Report?
The onus to "do something" post Mayne Report and post City of Melbourne is there. It's a cultural thing, but blokes are constantly asked what they are doing professionally. Frankly, things are currently very busy at home with Paula starting a new job today as general manager of EDVOS, the largest specialist family violence service provider in Melbourne's eastern suburbs, whilst our youngest Philip is starting year 7 at a new school tomorrow.
Paula is also juggling her commitments as a new City of Manningham councillor, so she's never been busier.
In other words, there's no need to rush into any new full-time endeavor given all that is going on, particularly given the ongoing uncertainty about the final City of Melbourne election result.
Launching The Sunlight Series with OurCommunity
However, we are very excited to have entered a local government focused collaboration with Australia's best adviser to the Not For Profit sector, OurCommunity, on something called "The Sunlight Series", a seminar program on governance and transparency for councillors and local government officers. Here is the flyer for the first seminar on March 22, along with the booking page.
If this goes well, there may be an option of pushing further into this space. There is no professional association or trade union for councillors and media coverage on the sector is also woeful, even though it really does matter for every community. The recent scathing Victorian Ombudsman report about local government transparency is also quite timely.
After 8 years serving on two councils (Manningham and Melbourne), there's a fair argument for putting some time and effort into improving the capability, reputation and performance of councillors, who are just like non-executive directors of companies.
Interestingly, this question of local government transparency is generating some debate at City of Melbourne at the moment. Check out the latest edition of CBD News for a stinging comment about alleged capital city secrecy.
What to do next?
Leaving aside "The Sunlight Series", I've been consulting with a few colleagues and friends about what to do next, assuming the VCAT decision doesn't prolong the councillor career.
The advice back from members of the MRCAC (Mayne Report Closure Advisory Committee) has been interesting and varied.
One business journalist said: "Remove your last journalistic conflict and quit the ASA board so you can go back to being a newspaper business editor or commentator".
An ABC person said: "Try and get some of your old ABC radio commentary gigs back".
An ASA member said: "Set up a political party for shareholders and survive on tax deductible donations."
The former stockbroker said: "become a stockbroker".
A fund manager said: "Go and work for one of those proxy advisory firms."
An old Crikey colleague said: "set up a specialist gender consultancy".
A former AFR journo said: "go back to doing Rear Window at The AFR and save Fairfax shareholders $300,000 a year along the way". Joe Aston, the incumbent, might be expensive but he is very good too.
A News Corp insider said: "Persuade Rupert to finally pension off McCrann and give you his commentary gig".
A TV person said: "Talk to Sky Business about getting your own show or pitch the ABC about bringing back Inside Business."
An ex journo in PR says: "Come and join us on the dark side as a corporate spinner - you'd do well."
Someone else in PR said: "become the Liz Broderick of governance…setting up a fearless consulting business to boards, getting them ready for AGMs etc". Hmmm, that would be the ultimate sell-out given all that shareholder activism since 1998.
A high profile mayor said: "Throw your lot in with the ASA and follow your shareholder activism passion through them."
A whistleblower said: "Set up 'Whistleblowers Australia' as a professional organisation supporting people like Amber Harrison."
Another observer reckons the citizen jury space would be a good one to pursue given past experience at City of Melbourne.
Don't mention this to Paula but an incumbent Federal politician suggested running a decent 12 month campaign to contest the November 2018 Victorian election and land a spot in the upper house. Yeah, right.
There was even a suggestion to hook up with Tim Costello on the pokies issue through the Alliance for Gambling Reform.
With two terminated memoir contracts under the belt, maybe it is time to finally lock myself away for six months and get it done. There's also journalism academia to think about. Dr Margaret Simons has just resigned her post at Melbourne University, sparking keen interest in the sector.
All these ideas have some merit but it might be time to do one thing well rather than having a portfolio of different interests. If you've got any thoughts, drop us a line by reply email. Feel free to call on 0412 106 241.
What to do with The Mayne Report email list?
With written journalism (particularly newspapers) in crisis, there might be an opportunity for someone departing the mainstream media to take over The Mayne Report email list and launch their own re-branded publication focused on some element of media, politics and business - or a combination of all three.
It might be one for a bunch of retrenched Fairfax journalists to take on. Alternatively, there is certainly a gap in the online market with no one out there pushing a moderate Liberal pro-Turnbull agenda. Maybe Turnbull should help get something off the ground himself.
However, advertising-based online news ventures are very tough these days with Google and Facebook hoovering up such a large proportion of the available spend.
Subscriptions are the only way to go but to do that you need to first build up a big high quality email list, which we've got.
After the latest clean out yesterday, there are 13,700 different email addresses on The Mayne Report data base. About 4000 have self-subscribed - the majority coming from a series of Fairfax articles in 2009 explaining how to make money from capital raisings - and the balance have been added internally into 37 different categories over the years. You do need to carefully navigate The Spam Act when adding email addresses and our big push was in the early years. We always strongly promoted the "unsubscribe" button at the top and bottom of each email edition.
The most useful categories include 92 “Directors”, 283 “Corporate Women”, 389 journo and PR types classified as “Business Media”, 443 “Portfolio Contacts” derived largely from ASX announcements, 47 “Head Hunters”, more than 1000 lawyers, over 100 current politicians, and more than 100 political journalists.
A quick search of certain email addresses on our data base throws up the following results:
APH.gov.au (work in Fed Parliament): 229
ASIC: 11
Macquarie Group: 55
ABC.net.au: 139
Fairfax: 31
CBA: 13
BHP: 15
Still pushing hard on Twitter
The future of the 13,700 strong Mayne Report email list is unclear, but we will continue to be active on Twitter, using the @maynereport handle for the time being.
Truth to be told, Twitter has been our primary communications tool for the past 6 years. And with 28,000 followers after a ridiculous 46,200 tweets, this will continue. The twitter handle can easily be re-badged at some point in the future, but to what?
Final thank-you
Thanks to all of you for supporting The Mayne Report which did last a lot longer than most ezines and produced some lively material, particularly in the shareholder advocacy and local government space. We had a purpose and there were times when we really made a difference.
For those who directly assisted such as Paul Bendat, Gabi Byrne, Colin Chee, Shane Marden, Mark Cornwall, Maria Pazaitis, James McPherson, John Hardy and Peter Merrylees, thanks for the memories and opportunity.
To the hundreds of donors and subscribers, thank you for helping us stay afloat for almost a decade.
To all you volunteer booth workers, thanks for stepping up in the political hour of need.
And to Paula, thanks for the indulgence and apologies there isn't a little more to show for the post-Crikey years. The next chapter, whatever it is, will hopefully deliver on the family KPIs.
Thanks also to our three kids - Laura, Alice and Philip - for understanding why dad spent so much time on the computer downstairs.
For the last time, try watching this 30 second anti-pokies ad made by Paul Bendat a few years ago featuring our daughter Alice, who was 6 at the time:
Make a farewell donation to fund a closure function
We'd like to put on a farewell function for those who helped sustain us for almost a decade, so if you fancy a farewell donation, we'll put it to good use.
Alternatively, if you don't like Paypal, donations can be transferred to our account at Westpac
Mayne Report Pty Ltd
BSB: 036 406
Account number: 130897
Or, you can send a cheque to PO Box 925, Templestowe 3106.
From the member edition archive
If you've got some time over the next 24 hours before all this email edition content disappears from public view, here are links to some of the more interesting missives we sent out over the past nine years.
2016 - 20 editions
Running in Melbourne, council elections, Eddie McGuire, JB Hi Fi, NAB political donations, Jeff Kennett and plenty more
Sunday, September 18, 2016
Go Malcolm, denting Kevin, AEC goes nuclear and plenty more
Thursday, July 7
Kevin's getting worried, campaign update, pokies, News Corp dispute, City of Melbourne and family news
Friday, June 17
Menzies update, Westfield rate dodging, The Australian's gossips and candidate betting
Tuesday, May 31, 2016
Turnbull, Warburton, pokies, AICD, IOOF, Quills, internal audit and much more
Monday, March 22, 2016
2015 - 8 editions
AGM season, PAITREOs, pokies, MAV, Copyright, Piccinini sisters, ANZ carbon and transcripts
November 5, 2015
Global Integrity Summit, Macquarie, pokies, council update, AGM season and family news
October 12, 2015
Battling Slaters, a Stokes shocker, council, CBA litigation, ASA conference and RACV reforms
April 30, 2015
Tenth anniversary of Crikey sale, Aristocrat AGM, council transparency and then some
March 9, 2015
2014 - 8 editions focused on back half of the year post ASA gig
Special edition on the Victorian election result
Sunday, November 30, 2014
Vic election, Herald Sun, Rupert votes, Tex, Xenophon and much morey
Sunday, November 23, 2014
Rupert AGMs, Cabcharge, Costello, Bolt, Ten and Victorian election
Sunday, November 16, 2014
Cabcharge, donations for Rupert visit and governance reforms at City of Melbourne
Wednesday, November 5, 2014
Tilts, Fairfax, CBA, Brickworks, Albert Park, ASX, Woolies, pokies and Crown
Friday, September 20, 2014
2013 - 10 editions with 5 favourites below
Capital raisings, Ansell, IAG, Packer, pokies, Rich List, City of Melbourne and ASA update
Monday, December 23, 2013
Franking robbery, East West trust breach, BHP bonuses, John Gay and plenty more
Sunday, August 25, 2013
ASA policy paper, Kevin Andrews on the pokies, Senate preferences and much more
August 19, 2013
ASA, Billabong, Westfield, Newcrest, Shorten, Turnbull, pokies and then some
Monday, July 22, 2013
Rudd v Gillard, referendum, Labor sleaze, Clive Palmer, ASA, City of Melbourne and plenty more
Monday, June 24, 2013
2012 - only 9 editions given council and ASA commitments
Backing Rudd, Lachlan, Bob Brown media debate, Manningham governance, Gunns and St Kilda AGM
Monday, February 20, 2012
The OZ goes mad, Murdoch piracy, AFR, pokies double rate, Gina, council super, BoQ rip-off and power speech
Wednesday, April 4, 2012
2011 - 21 editions but slowed down after elected to ASA board in May
Murdoch special, media inquiry, pokies, Manningham, Zara, secretive Shortenite crs and Vodafone take-down
Thursday, September 15, 2011
Elected to ASA board, pokies, Rio, Santos, RHG, Hartigan, Manningham, capital raisings and Rich List
Thursday, May 19, 2011
2010 - 39 editions and last year with paid staff
Paperlinx, Packer, Murdoch, Manningham, pokies, Rich ex wives, foreign takeovers and much more
Saturday, October 23, 2010
DJs, women on boards, ex Lib goes no pokies, preferences, Pratt-Shorten, Labor's debt and Manningham council audio
August 3, 2010
Director rankings, Rio, Westfield, MAP, Manningham, Paatsch, state election, rich list, pokies and much more
June 9, 2010
Political donations, Stokes, Westfield tower, Richard Colless, Manningham nursing home, state debt, Rich List and Grand Prix
February 23, 2010
2009 - 40 editions but was slowed down by Manningham council
Seven AGM, crazy Perth visit, Fairfax, Telstra, Transfield, capital raisings and much more
November 9, 2009
News Corp AGM, Packer, Fairfax, James Strong, Woolies, Eastern Golf, Kohler-Gatto and much more
October 20, 2009
Bad Bendigo, Mark Day, Manningham, pokies, NAB, Asciano, Rich List, Paladin and hostile EGMs
September 15, 2009
Macquarie AGM, Melbourne's decline, Asciano EGM, capital raisings, Goyder's pokies and AGM diary
July 28, 2009
2008 - 172 editions in our first and best full year of operation as the GFC hit and before we got overloaded at Manningham
71% backing at Centro, $11bn backing at BHP and huge Qantas protest
November 28, 2008
Combank's $700m ABC Learning debacle
November 13, 2008
Toll board skewered over $55m executive rort
October 30, 2008
Rupert's accountability dodge, Macquarie's Italian hit, Babcock funds revamp, pokieact.org and rich lists.
October 20, 2008
BHP and Woolies tilts, AFIC push on Stan Wallis, ASX-Kohler yarn and new Rich Listers
September 26, 2008
Owen Hegarty payout rolled, history is made
July 18, 2008
Great debate at the Babcock AGM
May 30, 2008
Our liveliest edition yet
Thursday, May 8, 2008
Burrows quits Fairfax, Rupert, donations, long-serving directors and much more
January 31, 2008
Markets tumble, Rupert book deal, Centro, Rich List, Xenophon, AFR tips and our buying spree
January 17, 2008
Before we go, a final challenge for readers! Our email editions were often noteworthy for literals. We've read and re-read this effort and challenge you to find one! Just email stephen@maynereport.com which will remain operational into the future.
That's all for now - and forever!
Do ya best, Stephen Mayne
* The Mayne Report was an email newsletter and website which promoted transparency and good governance in the corporate, political and media worlds. It was published from October 2007 until January 31, 2017 by Stephen Mayne, the founder of Crikey.com, shareholder advocate, ASA director and former City of Melbourne councillor.
It is our melancholy duty to inform you that this is our final email edition of The Mayne Report which will be closing at 8am tomorrow morning. No more emails, no more website and no public archive of the past 9-plus years! All gone. No more.
The main reason is that our content management system provider, Lagado, who we go back with to the very early days of Crikey in 2000, are withdrawing their service. I eked a few extra months out of them but we are their last legacy client on their oldest system which costs them plenty even after we pay them more than $4000 a year.
There's no bad blood. They've given plenty of notice and we could have transferred to a different provider or built a new wordpress site and shifted the email service to Mailchimp or Campaign Monitor. However, given the volume of content they are hosting, this would have been a big task for a venture which has no revenue beyond event-driven donations. Therefore, we've gone instead with the closure option and a clean break to pursue new opportunities.
This is what is currently on The Mayne Report content management system.
Articles: 3,440
Words in articles: 3.9 million
Audio files: 1,855
PDF files: 1,024
Email editions: 355
(there are also 281 videos on our Youtube channel.)
We've got access to all of this content on DVDs and will be able to re-purpose it as required over time, but it won't be coming back as The Mayne Report in anything like its current form. A re-brand under some different stewardship is not out of the question, if there's interest.
A brief potted history of The Mayne Report
When burying a media outlet in these tough times for journalists, you should try to give a factual account of what happened.
The Mayne Report was initially a 50-50 partnership with Paul Bendat, the model being a daily video blog, plus some Crikey-style email content focused on shareholder activism. We overlooked the fact that I had what they describe in the trade as "a good head for radio".
Here are links to some of the videos we made in the early years, which will remain available on Youtube, partly because I don't know the password to The Mayne Report Youtube channel which hasn't been changed in 6 years:
Extracting an apology from Rupert over Glenn Milne assault
The Macquarie Model a dead parrot
Taking on CNBC's Jim Cramer
Interviewing Nick Xenophon ahead of 2010 Victorian election
Rupert versus Macquarie on defamation battle over Michael West
Skewering the Oxiana-Zinifex merger
Bruce Teele's gag at AFIC AGM
Setting the scene for Rupert battle in NYC
Timbercorp tanks
Babcock & Brown tanks
Phil Green's Babcock mea culpa at final AGM
Phil Green, Max Green and Bill Lewski
Babcock beats Macquarie on fee disclosure
Who owns the Australian farm?
Evicted from outside the HWT offices
Qantas, the TWU and good governance
Why don't Rich Listers look after retail with SPPs after placements?
That launch article in The Australian talked about The Mayne Report being a competitor to the institutional proxy advisers and the Australian Shareholders' Association, but in the end it was a bit of everything spanning business, politics, media, shareholder activism and local government.
Paul Bendat had lots of television and radio experience, both in his own right and from working with his father, Jack Bendat, who spent a couple of decades as Kerry Stokes' main business partner in Perth.
He had just moved from the US to Melbourne and we met on June 28, 2006 at a Melbourne Press Club lunch featuring Rich Lister and media buyer Harold Mitchell. My beloved Paula Piccinini remembers the date well because it was her birthday and she didn't particularly rate lunch at the Docklands stadium listening to Harold as the greatest way to celebrate that milestone.
The following 5 months was consumed by the disaster that was the start-up political party People Power which ran about 50 candidates in the November 2006 Victorian election but bombed badly, burning around 40k of the Crikey sale proceeds in the process.
However, Paula did land her seat on the RACV board during this People Power fiasco, something which may not have happened if we hadn't been focused on contested elections and collected most of the 25 RACV member signatures required for nomination at a People Power event. Paula does regard this defence of People Power as putting lipstick on a pig, but I digress.
Juggling Crikey non-compete with Mayne Report launch
Once the dust had settled on the dysfunctional People Power experiment, early 2007 was spent getting ready to launch The Mayne Report.
The $1 million Crikey sale occurred on March 9, 2005 and the wide-ranging 4-year non-compete agreement with Private Media Partners ran until March 2009. This ended up being quite a constraint on The Mayne Report but was perfectly fair in the circumstances. A deal is a deal.
Limited relief was negotiated with the new Crikey owners Eric Beecher and Di Gribble but we were restricted from emailing more than 500 people at once and also had to continue filing every day for Crikey, which meant it wasn't possible to focus exclusively on The Mayne Report. However, at least those Crikey articles produced some revenue and a little cross-promotion too.
The public announcement of the new venture was done through this story by Nick Tabakoff in The Australian's Media section on September 6, 2007. (There is nothing on our closure in today's Media section in The Australian!)
This was followed by a trip to New York for the October 19 News Corp AGM, as this goofy video scene-setter outlines. It was a successful venture with $5 billion worth of stock supporting our shareholder resolution (see p18 of this document) to end Rupert's voting gerrymander. I also recorded a video outside Kevin Rudd's favourite New York strip club announcing a tilt against Peter Costello in his seat of Higgins at the November 24 Federal election. Out there immersion journalism - combining activism, elections and commentary - was going to be a Mayne Report theme, like the early days of Crikey.
Partnership over before it began
Paul Bendat and I then had a disagreement over launch timing with Paul wanting certain administrative matters sorted before going live with the flash website. Having announced the Costello tilt, I wanted to quickly unveil the new website which Paul had commissioned and paid for, rather than prolonging use of the Youtube channel and a black and white stop-gap website.
Paul then decided to amicably exit before launch, although we've remained good buddies since. He moved brilliantly into the pokies advocacy space and was also the biggest backer of last year's tilt against Kevin Andrews, whose campaigns have received strong support from pokies interests.
In hindsight, perhaps we should never have launched at all but the current Mayne Report website went live in early November 2007. We were quickly burning plenty of cash with three staff and a nanny and only a few $500 subscriptions. The travel bill also ran to tens of thousands over the years. Unlike Youtube, the initial video hosting contract cost tens of thousands. This wasn't such a concern in the early days as I had a fair bit invested in the share market which also peaked in early November 2007. Paula was also back at the bar as a family law barrister and we had her RACV gig to help keep us going, plus modest funding from Crikey articles and the odd paid speech.
However, with Paul Bendat off the scene, I was a words guy who had two skilled video editors, Colin Chee and Shane Marden, coming in to the home office every day and working alongside office manager Gabi Byrne, who is also a well-known anti-pokies campaigner.
The video guys weren't overly busy using their skills, so when the sharemarket started to crater in 2008, we picked up a contract helping New McPherson Media produce in-house videos for Myer. It wasn't long before Colin Chee then went full-time with New McPherson in February 2009, leaving Shane Marden to handle all of our multi-media work solo for the next two years. Both were very impressive and hard working individuals who helped effectively build a massive library of everything we'd done.
Peaking in 2008
2008 was the biggest year for The Mayne Report when we produced a whopping 172 email editions, but also pumped out 264 Crikey stories to satisfy the waiver agreement to the non-compete. Throw in attending a record 63 AGMs, generating dozens of videos and doing almost 100 ABC radio spots and we were going hard at it. No wonder the $20,000 January 2008 contract with Rupert's Harper Collins publishing division never materialised into the promised memoir. All this happened as the stock market was crashing courtesy of the GFC. It was a bit like launching Crikey at the peak of the boom in February 2000 just three months before the Dotcom crash.
Then, just 3 months before the Crikey non-compete was due to end, I accidentally got myself elected onto Manningham City Council in November 2008. Whilst exciting at one level, this also meant The Mayne Report was never given my undivided attention. The brilliant Colin Chee then exited in February 2009 and we also stopped taking paid subscriptions at this point as there would have been a potential conflict with Manningham people having to pay to see what was being said.
Importantly, with The Mayne Report closing, no one will be able to say there is any confusion or conflict of interest with other activities such as being on the ASA board, contributing to Crikey or serving as a councillor.
Capital raising windfalls provide lifeline to The Mayne Report
We'd paid off the mortgage with the Crikey sale proceeds but the operating costs of The Mayne Report, combined with sharemarket losses of more than $100,000 putting together the world's biggest small share portfolio at the top of the market, meant the surplus cash was largely gone when the sharemarket bottomed in March 2009.
I'd literally just started to liquidate the portfolio in February 2009 when Wesfarmers came along with a heavily discounted non-renounceable capital raising at $13.50. Retail shareholders were entitled to apply for "overs" to pick up the shortfall from non-participants and with the shares up around $17 on the last day, I borrowed $200,000 from a mate and threw the kitchen sink at the overs.
Wesfarmers scaled back the overs to a maximum of 1000 shares but this still produced a quick profit of $3200. What followed was an avalanche of similar offers and suddenly the world's biggest small share portfolio was able to keep funding The Mayne Report courtesy of circa 300k in gross profits playing the margins of capital raisings over the following few years. Every play is detailed in full here but 2009 was easily the biggest year with the monthly gross profits flowing as follows, helping pay for indulgences such as an $8000 40th birthday party dinner at the RACV Club:
March 2009: $10,170 profit
April 2009: $36,996 profit
May 2009: $31,639 profit
June 2009: $86,600 profit
July 2009: $28,293 profit
August 2009: $12,758 profit
September 2009: $32,229 profit
October 2009: $8901 profit
November 2009: $16,800 profit
Regardless of capital raising profits, there still was the issue of The Mayne Report sustaining staff and having no revenue, unless you argued the content assisted with capital raising outcomes. In November 2009, after 12 months on council, I ran for mayor of Manningham but lost 5-4 to the Labor incumbent Charles Pick. Success would have seen The Mayne Report put on hold for the next 12 months, potentially never returning.
As it happened, divisions at Manningham exploded from that point on and it proved a major distraction from running The Mayne Report which by this time had no direct revenue except for event-driven donations such as funding for the annual trip to New York to tackle Rupert Murdoch.
We we were still burning plenty of cash as we had two full-time staff so Paula and I agreed this would come to an end after the Victorian election in November 2010, which represented "the last chance saloon" in terms of getting elected to a full time political gig. Our youngest Philip had gone into prep in 2010 so it was getting hard to justify a full-time nanny who also helped out a little on The Mayne Report.
The Australian Shareholders' Association then unexpectedly advertised for a CEO in September 2010 so I applied for that role, offering to close The Mayne Report and resign from City of Manningham. The two person ASA board sub-committee didn't even tell the full board their one-man-band competitor had applied to be CEO. Subsequently, I successfully ran for the ASA board in May 2011 as part of a plan to scale back The Mayne Report's shareholder advocacy and instead work institutionally on creating a stronger culture of shareholder pressure through the ASA.
Almost securing Victorian balance of power
The Mayne Report website and email list had always been somewhat of a platform for election campaigns, available to be wheeled out when required. Similarly, it was also a convenient fall-back option for journalism and commentary. If Crikey or any other freelance outlet declined to run a submitted piece, you could quickly pump out a Mayne Report edition to get your point out there.
Arguably the cleverest political tactic we managed was a two-election preference deal with The Greens and Family First in 2010. Senator Steve Fielding and then perennial election loser Richard Di Natale were both desperate to crack the Senate at the 2010 Federal election, so Paula and I ran as independents and split our first preference equally between both of them. In return, both parties agreed in writing to preference me first in the Victoria upper house region of Northern Metropolitan at the subsequent state election.
With these preferences in the bag, I knew that a primary vote of 1.5% would be enough to land a 4 year gig in the Victorian upper house. The execution wasn't good enough and we only polled 0.97%, but still went very close. In hindsight, with those amazing preferences deals in place, we should have thrown more resources and people at that campaign. We still did plenty, as this video demonstrates, but the winning deal would have been to negotiate an upper house endorsement on fellow independent Phil Cleary's how to vote card in the lower house seat of Brunswick. He polled 12% and was silent on how his supporters should have voted in Northern Metropolitan.
That would have been 4 years of Victorian balance of power in my own right and fulfillment of a dream to try and be the Nick Xenophon of Victoria. Considering the breadth of governance reforms that was leveraged out of 4 years with balance of power at City of Melbourne, who knows what could have come from a similar role in the Victorian upper house?
Alas, it wasn't to be, so our two remaining staff, Shane and Maria, were let go at the end of 2010 and a low-cost version of The Mayne Report limped along for the next 6 years.
Effectively, the site has been on care and maintenance since then but has always been available for various campaigns. It certainly helped during the state by-election for the seat of Melbourne in 2012, which in turn assisted in getting elected to City of Melbourne later that year, again thanks to a multi-election preference agreement with the Greens.
Similarly, it was largely The Mayne Report community which delivered 124 donations totaling almost $40,000 to take on Kevin Andrews in Menzies last year.
However, there were quiet periods as well, particularly during the two years from 2012 until 2014 when I was juggling the twin responsibilities of being a City of Melbourne councillor and the paid position of Policy and Engagement Co-ordinator at the ASA. We only published a combined 35 email editions in the 4 years to the end up 2015 - compared with 172 in 2008.
It ultimately had to end some time but the timing of this closure was driven by the irrevocable withdrawal of service by our patient content management system provider. Therefore, the time has now come to permanently put The Mayne Report to bed and focus on other endeavors.
What to do with all those lists
With the website fading to black tomorrow, there are a few issues to sort out.
You may have noticed Friday's special edition chronicling all the lists we've been involved with over the years. These matter as they represent hundreds of hours of researched and crowd-sourced material. Most of it is quite original too.
That is why the 200-plus Mayne Report lists are the saddest loss in terms of content being removed tomorrow from the public domain.
However, as was outlined on Friday, some of the early versions are currently available in the Crikey archive and discussions are continuing with Crikey about cranking this up in the future, including converting some of the existing Mayne Report lists and generating some completely new lists.
The majority of the existing Mayne Report lists are related to shareholder advocacy, AGMs and business material, which would make more sense to sit with the Australian Shareholders' Association or some other proxy advisory, funds management or business research house. We'll work hard to make that happen.
Sad to see the AGM audio go
The other sad loss from public view is all that edited AGM audio between October 2007 and December 2010, when the last of our two multi-media managers departed.
We were ahead of our time getting into AGM videos and audio, something which the mainstream media has rarely produced and even the ASA has not yet tapped into.
I've been doing a few "from the audio archive" tweets in recent days. Have a listen to some of these AGM exchanges before they disappear:
Challenging Ten's executive chair Nick Falloon for avoiding election
Getting into Woolworths for censoring plaform and using no vacancy rort
Tackling the blokey billionaires who run Reece over gender issues
Telling Roger Corbett to stop holding Fairfax AGMs at Packer's casino
Asking Rupert about phone hacking in 2010
Successfully persuading Transfield to do an SPP
Pitching for MAP board against Max the Axe Moore-Wilton
Looking back, I really was quite a smart-alec at some of those AGMs. No wonder some people don't forgive or forget.
ASA secures fabulous CEO
Whilst the ASA directors weren't interested in taking on Mayne Report content or services when the issue was raised last year, things are moving along nicely at the peak body for retail shareholders. It is terrific news that the ASA has secured Judith Fox as CEO, commencing on February 27. Judith has run policy at the Governance Institute for a decade but has a wide range of skills and connections that will help transform ASA. It will be an exciting time to be involved as an ASA director with a top gun CEO now at the helm.
Hanging in at City of Melbourne
On the City of Melbourne front, it has now been three months since the desk was cleared, but The Mayne Report won't be around to update you on how the final chapter finishes.
There will be a one-day VCAT hearing on February 21 to determine the replacement for Brooke Wandin, who was declared a City of Melbourne councillor but then withdrew. Brooke and defeated Labor councillor Richard Foster are due to face the Magistrate's court this week. The cover story of this week's CBD News has all the latest information on that saga, including the surprising revelation that Lord Mayor Robert Doyle personally called Victorian Electoral Commissioner Warwick Gately on November 9 and December 6.
Some of us have been a little surprised to see the Commissioner so aggressively pursuing a course of action through the courts that will remove Phil Cleary's Councillor, QVM trader Michael Caiafa, and give Team Doyle a majority through the election of former deputy lord mayor Susan Riley.
Watching these issues from afar, I'm personally relaxed about moving on from City of Melbourne but decidedly uncomfortable about the idea of a Doyle majority in these controversial circumstances. Hence, the decision to actively participate at the VCAT hearing on February 21 and potentially get back on council if the Supreme Court judge (Garde) hearing the matter decides to eliminate the entire Brooke Wandin ticket from the count.
As these orders after the late December VCAT directions hearing attest, I've been joined as a party and will probably self-represent on February 21. We've been given an extension until February 3 to file our response to the VEC materials which were distributed to the parties on January 6. See here for the submission I worked up for the Directions hearing but didn't end up providing to the senior member. There's only a 20% chance of getting back on City of Melbourne but we'll give it a go and I can't really settle on any major "next steps" until this is resolved.
What next after The Mayne Report?
The onus to "do something" post Mayne Report and post City of Melbourne is there. It's a cultural thing, but blokes are constantly asked what they are doing professionally. Frankly, things are currently very busy at home with Paula starting a new job today as general manager of EDVOS, the largest specialist family violence service provider in Melbourne's eastern suburbs, whilst our youngest Philip is starting year 7 at a new school tomorrow.
Paula is also juggling her commitments as a new City of Manningham councillor, so she's never been busier.
In other words, there's no need to rush into any new full-time endeavor given all that is going on, particularly given the ongoing uncertainty about the final City of Melbourne election result.
Launching The Sunlight Series with OurCommunity
However, we are very excited to have entered a local government focused collaboration with Australia's best adviser to the Not For Profit sector, OurCommunity, on something called "The Sunlight Series", a seminar program on governance and transparency for councillors and local government officers. Here is the flyer for the first seminar on March 22, along with the booking page.
If this goes well, there may be an option of pushing further into this space. There is no professional association or trade union for councillors and media coverage on the sector is also woeful, even though it really does matter for every community. The recent scathing Victorian Ombudsman report about local government transparency is also quite timely.
After 8 years serving on two councils (Manningham and Melbourne), there's a fair argument for putting some time and effort into improving the capability, reputation and performance of councillors, who are just like non-executive directors of companies.
Interestingly, this question of local government transparency is generating some debate at City of Melbourne at the moment. Check out the latest edition of CBD News for a stinging comment about alleged capital city secrecy.
What to do next?
Leaving aside "The Sunlight Series", I've been consulting with a few colleagues and friends about what to do next, assuming the VCAT decision doesn't prolong the councillor career.
The advice back from members of the MRCAC (Mayne Report Closure Advisory Committee) has been interesting and varied.
One business journalist said: "Remove your last journalistic conflict and quit the ASA board so you can go back to being a newspaper business editor or commentator".
An ABC person said: "Try and get some of your old ABC radio commentary gigs back".
An ASA member said: "Set up a political party for shareholders and survive on tax deductible donations."
The former stockbroker said: "become a stockbroker".
A fund manager said: "Go and work for one of those proxy advisory firms."
An old Crikey colleague said: "set up a specialist gender consultancy".
A former AFR journo said: "go back to doing Rear Window at The AFR and save Fairfax shareholders $300,000 a year along the way". Joe Aston, the incumbent, might be expensive but he is very good too.
A News Corp insider said: "Persuade Rupert to finally pension off McCrann and give you his commentary gig".
A TV person said: "Talk to Sky Business about getting your own show or pitch the ABC about bringing back Inside Business."
An ex journo in PR says: "Come and join us on the dark side as a corporate spinner - you'd do well."
Someone else in PR said: "become the Liz Broderick of governance…setting up a fearless consulting business to boards, getting them ready for AGMs etc". Hmmm, that would be the ultimate sell-out given all that shareholder activism since 1998.
A high profile mayor said: "Throw your lot in with the ASA and follow your shareholder activism passion through them."
A whistleblower said: "Set up 'Whistleblowers Australia' as a professional organisation supporting people like Amber Harrison."
Another observer reckons the citizen jury space would be a good one to pursue given past experience at City of Melbourne.
Don't mention this to Paula but an incumbent Federal politician suggested running a decent 12 month campaign to contest the November 2018 Victorian election and land a spot in the upper house. Yeah, right.
There was even a suggestion to hook up with Tim Costello on the pokies issue through the Alliance for Gambling Reform.
With two terminated memoir contracts under the belt, maybe it is time to finally lock myself away for six months and get it done. There's also journalism academia to think about. Dr Margaret Simons has just resigned her post at Melbourne University, sparking keen interest in the sector.
All these ideas have some merit but it might be time to do one thing well rather than having a portfolio of different interests. If you've got any thoughts, drop us a line by reply email. Feel free to call on 0412 106 241.
What to do with The Mayne Report email list?
With written journalism (particularly newspapers) in crisis, there might be an opportunity for someone departing the mainstream media to take over The Mayne Report email list and launch their own re-branded publication focused on some element of media, politics and business - or a combination of all three.
It might be one for a bunch of retrenched Fairfax journalists to take on. Alternatively, there is certainly a gap in the online market with no one out there pushing a moderate Liberal pro-Turnbull agenda. Maybe Turnbull should help get something off the ground himself.
However, advertising-based online news ventures are very tough these days with Google and Facebook hoovering up such a large proportion of the available spend.
Subscriptions are the only way to go but to do that you need to first build up a big high quality email list, which we've got.
After the latest clean out yesterday, there are 13,700 different email addresses on The Mayne Report data base. About 4000 have self-subscribed - the majority coming from a series of Fairfax articles in 2009 explaining how to make money from capital raisings - and the balance have been added internally into 37 different categories over the years. You do need to carefully navigate The Spam Act when adding email addresses and our big push was in the early years. We always strongly promoted the "unsubscribe" button at the top and bottom of each email edition.
The most useful categories include 92 “Directors”, 283 “Corporate Women”, 389 journo and PR types classified as “Business Media”, 443 “Portfolio Contacts” derived largely from ASX announcements, 47 “Head Hunters”, more than 1000 lawyers, over 100 current politicians, and more than 100 political journalists.
A quick search of certain email addresses on our data base throws up the following results:
APH.gov.au (work in Fed Parliament): 229
ASIC: 11
Macquarie Group: 55
ABC.net.au: 139
Fairfax: 31
CBA: 13
BHP: 15
Still pushing hard on Twitter
The future of the 13,700 strong Mayne Report email list is unclear, but we will continue to be active on Twitter, using the @maynereport handle for the time being.
Truth to be told, Twitter has been our primary communications tool for the past 6 years. And with 28,000 followers after a ridiculous 46,200 tweets, this will continue. The twitter handle can easily be re-badged at some point in the future, but to what?
Final thank-you
Thanks to all of you for supporting The Mayne Report which did last a lot longer than most ezines and produced some lively material, particularly in the shareholder advocacy and local government space. We had a purpose and there were times when we really made a difference.
For those who directly assisted such as Paul Bendat, Gabi Byrne, Colin Chee, Shane Marden, Mark Cornwall, Maria Pazaitis, James McPherson, John Hardy and Peter Merrylees, thanks for the memories and opportunity.
To the hundreds of donors and subscribers, thank you for helping us stay afloat for almost a decade.
To all you volunteer booth workers, thanks for stepping up in the political hour of need.
And to Paula, thanks for the indulgence and apologies there isn't a little more to show for the post-Crikey years. The next chapter, whatever it is, will hopefully deliver on the family KPIs.
Thanks also to our three kids - Laura, Alice and Philip - for understanding why dad spent so much time on the computer downstairs.
For the last time, try watching this 30 second anti-pokies ad made by Paul Bendat a few years ago featuring our daughter Alice, who was 6 at the time:
Make a farewell donation to fund a closure function
We'd like to put on a farewell function for those who helped sustain us for almost a decade, so if you fancy a farewell donation, we'll put it to good use.
Alternatively, if you don't like Paypal, donations can be transferred to our account at Westpac
Mayne Report Pty Ltd
BSB: 036 406
Account number: 130897
Or, you can send a cheque to PO Box 925, Templestowe 3106.
From the member edition archive
If you've got some time over the next 24 hours before all this email edition content disappears from public view, here are links to some of the more interesting missives we sent out over the past nine years.
2016 - 20 editions
Running in Melbourne, council elections, Eddie McGuire, JB Hi Fi, NAB political donations, Jeff Kennett and plenty more
Sunday, September 18, 2016
Go Malcolm, denting Kevin, AEC goes nuclear and plenty more
Thursday, July 7
Kevin's getting worried, campaign update, pokies, News Corp dispute, City of Melbourne and family news
Friday, June 17
Menzies update, Westfield rate dodging, The Australian's gossips and candidate betting
Tuesday, May 31, 2016
Turnbull, Warburton, pokies, AICD, IOOF, Quills, internal audit and much more
Monday, March 22, 2016
2015 - 8 editions
AGM season, PAITREOs, pokies, MAV, Copyright, Piccinini sisters, ANZ carbon and transcripts
November 5, 2015
Global Integrity Summit, Macquarie, pokies, council update, AGM season and family news
October 12, 2015
Battling Slaters, a Stokes shocker, council, CBA litigation, ASA conference and RACV reforms
April 30, 2015
Tenth anniversary of Crikey sale, Aristocrat AGM, council transparency and then some
March 9, 2015
2014 - 8 editions focused on back half of the year post ASA gig
Special edition on the Victorian election result
Sunday, November 30, 2014
Vic election, Herald Sun, Rupert votes, Tex, Xenophon and much morey
Sunday, November 23, 2014
Rupert AGMs, Cabcharge, Costello, Bolt, Ten and Victorian election
Sunday, November 16, 2014
Cabcharge, donations for Rupert visit and governance reforms at City of Melbourne
Wednesday, November 5, 2014
Tilts, Fairfax, CBA, Brickworks, Albert Park, ASX, Woolies, pokies and Crown
Friday, September 20, 2014
2013 - 10 editions with 5 favourites below
Capital raisings, Ansell, IAG, Packer, pokies, Rich List, City of Melbourne and ASA update
Monday, December 23, 2013
Franking robbery, East West trust breach, BHP bonuses, John Gay and plenty more
Sunday, August 25, 2013
ASA policy paper, Kevin Andrews on the pokies, Senate preferences and much more
August 19, 2013
ASA, Billabong, Westfield, Newcrest, Shorten, Turnbull, pokies and then some
Monday, July 22, 2013
Rudd v Gillard, referendum, Labor sleaze, Clive Palmer, ASA, City of Melbourne and plenty more
Monday, June 24, 2013
2012 - only 9 editions given council and ASA commitments
Backing Rudd, Lachlan, Bob Brown media debate, Manningham governance, Gunns and St Kilda AGM
Monday, February 20, 2012
The OZ goes mad, Murdoch piracy, AFR, pokies double rate, Gina, council super, BoQ rip-off and power speech
Wednesday, April 4, 2012
2011 - 21 editions but slowed down after elected to ASA board in May
Murdoch special, media inquiry, pokies, Manningham, Zara, secretive Shortenite crs and Vodafone take-down
Thursday, September 15, 2011
Elected to ASA board, pokies, Rio, Santos, RHG, Hartigan, Manningham, capital raisings and Rich List
Thursday, May 19, 2011
2010 - 39 editions and last year with paid staff
Paperlinx, Packer, Murdoch, Manningham, pokies, Rich ex wives, foreign takeovers and much more
Saturday, October 23, 2010
DJs, women on boards, ex Lib goes no pokies, preferences, Pratt-Shorten, Labor's debt and Manningham council audio
August 3, 2010
Director rankings, Rio, Westfield, MAP, Manningham, Paatsch, state election, rich list, pokies and much more
June 9, 2010
Political donations, Stokes, Westfield tower, Richard Colless, Manningham nursing home, state debt, Rich List and Grand Prix
February 23, 2010
2009 - 40 editions but was slowed down by Manningham council
Seven AGM, crazy Perth visit, Fairfax, Telstra, Transfield, capital raisings and much more
November 9, 2009
News Corp AGM, Packer, Fairfax, James Strong, Woolies, Eastern Golf, Kohler-Gatto and much more
October 20, 2009
Bad Bendigo, Mark Day, Manningham, pokies, NAB, Asciano, Rich List, Paladin and hostile EGMs
September 15, 2009
Macquarie AGM, Melbourne's decline, Asciano EGM, capital raisings, Goyder's pokies and AGM diary
July 28, 2009
2008 - 172 editions in our first and best full year of operation as the GFC hit and before we got overloaded at Manningham
71% backing at Centro, $11bn backing at BHP and huge Qantas protest
November 28, 2008
Combank's $700m ABC Learning debacle
November 13, 2008
Toll board skewered over $55m executive rort
October 30, 2008
Rupert's accountability dodge, Macquarie's Italian hit, Babcock funds revamp, pokieact.org and rich lists.
October 20, 2008
BHP and Woolies tilts, AFIC push on Stan Wallis, ASX-Kohler yarn and new Rich Listers
September 26, 2008
Owen Hegarty payout rolled, history is made
July 18, 2008
Great debate at the Babcock AGM
May 30, 2008
Our liveliest edition yet
Thursday, May 8, 2008
Burrows quits Fairfax, Rupert, donations, long-serving directors and much more
January 31, 2008
Markets tumble, Rupert book deal, Centro, Rich List, Xenophon, AFR tips and our buying spree
January 17, 2008
Before we go, a final challenge for readers! Our email editions were often noteworthy for literals. We've read and re-read this effort and challenge you to find one! Just email stephen@maynereport.com which will remain operational into the future.
That's all for now - and forever!
Do ya best, Stephen Mayne
* The Mayne Report was an email newsletter and website which promoted transparency and good governance in the corporate, political and media worlds. It was published from October 2007 until January 31, 2017 by Stephen Mayne, the founder of Crikey.com, shareholder advocate, ASA director and former City of Melbourne councillor.