Why I'm Starting Rampart

Welcome to Rampart, and to the start of what I know will be an informative, entertaining and rewarding journey for both you and me.

I want Rampart to be the gold standard in investigative commentary on Australian business and finance and I will spend every minute of my time and every filament of my brainpower delivering to that standard for my subscribers.

When I left the Australian Financial Review in October 2023, I desperately needed a break from the relentless grind of daily columnising. But after 12 years as a salaried journalist, I had also come to yearn greater independence. 

By that, I don’t mean editorial independence. I was granted that in spades. What I desired was self-determination: to project my work and its philosophy to readers on a standalone basis (that is, outside the bundle of a legacy newspaper); to capture and control the economics of that directly; and to enjoy a direct – not intermediated – two-way relationship with my readers.

I still love the AFR. It is undoubtedly Australia’s best newspaper, and I’m delighted to be back – starting this month – writing a monthly column for AFR Weekend. But by the time I left in 2023, I’m confident that the subscription revenue I was generating for Nine was many multiples of what Nine was paying me. Rather than harbour any resentment about that, I simply decided to do something about it.

My record stint on the AFR’s Rear Window column was an evolution. What started off in 2012 as a catty corporate gossip column was by 2020 a vehicle for some of the most powerful and dauntless business journalism in the land. Rampart will enable me to continue that evolution, to move even further up the quality curve – while still committed to landing the belly laughs.

If there was one thing I hated about my old job, it was the days when (despite my best efforts) I had nothing new or interesting to say yet had to write a column anyway.

At Rampart, when I don’t have anything new or interesting to say, I won’t say anything. I will never again waste my readers’ time with page filler. I’ll instead devote more hours to each article – to making the extra calls, doing the additional reading, and weighing up more points of view. Spending 10 months researching and writing my book, The Chairman’s Lounge, has clearly had its effect on “my process”!

I don’t get the sense that my audience wants more content for its own sake. Personally, when I open my inbox each morning to newsletters from the AFR, The Australian, the Sydney Morning Herald, the Daily Telegraph, Bloomberg News, and the Financial Times – not to mention the latest on the cricket from Gideon Haigh – I feel completely overwhelmed and already behind the eight ball. Like me I’m sure, my audience doesn’t want more content, it just wants the best content. So that is what I’ll focus monomaniacally on producing. I won’t rush to get you the first take, I’ll take the time to give you the outstanding take; to provide you with the real story, which so often everyone else has missed.

Rampart won’t be for everyone. It is written for the smartest people in corporate Australia, in the investment market and in government. If that’s you, you can’t afford not to subscribe. 

To read any of my articles you’ll need a paid subscription. You can get that sorted by clicking the button below.

Look out for my very first article, which will hit your inbox on Friday morning. And thanks again for coming this far with me.

Bombs away!

Joe