A suitor for Fairfax? Did Crikey‘s tip yesterday regarding Fairfax’s falling share price flush a potential suitor? Fairfax Media is carrying a story this morning that Gina Rinehart, through a spokesperson, had ruled out a Fairfax offer with Rupert Murdoch’s nephew Matt Handbury, a perennial sniffer around media assets in Sydney. Handbury has been associated (in the media and market chat) with interest in the ACP Magazines stable, which Nine sold to Bauer. He made his money with Murdoch Magazines, which he sold to Seven West Media. Lately, Handbury has been rumoured to have an interest in Fairfax Media, but he doesn’t have much of the folding stuff. So the talk is Handbury is trying to corral some “angel” investors, such as the mega-rich Rinehart, into backing his ambitions. The spokesperson for Rinehart said there was “nothing happening with [Rinehart’s company] Hancock and Fairfax other than maintaining the stake in the company”. That’s pretty decisive, isn’t it? Fairfax shares ended at 83.5 cents, up 2.4% yesterday. So will they stay there, drop or rise today? Wall Street fell last night, which will be a big test for the urgers trying to get Fairfax Media in play. Of course, Matt Handbury is long on ambition but short on funds of the sort needed to have his desires taken seriously. — Glenn Dyer

Taking out the laundry. Apple iPhone release this morning means every other tech company worth its salt is quietly releasing bad news today, hoping it gets lost in the hype. First out of the gate was Snapchat, which revealed it settled for an undisclosed amount with ousted co-founder Reggie Brown, who says he came up with the app’s whole ‘”send-a-photo-then-it’s-gone” thing but wasn’t given any company equity. Meanwhile swipe-hot-or-not dating app Tinder announced chief marketing officer Justin Mateen was stepping down after allegations he’d sexually harassed one of the app’s co-founders. SFGate is keeping an eye on the dumps… check back later on for more updates.

What’s the biggest show in town? The Oz has accused The Sydney  Morning Herald and The Australian Financial Review of “breathlessly” reporting the revelations out of ICAC:

“ICAC has descended into a show trial and a plaything of prosecutors thinking they have their own US-style televised courtroom. The reporting is a feeding frenzy, with journalists claiming the federal Liberals have been contaminated. It has spawned absurd remedies, such as a federal ICAC. Meanwhile, the bigger story has been lost: how several former Labor ministers abused the system to personally enrich themselves with tens of millions of dollars of public funds.”

The Bill Leak cartoon illustrating the point, lampooning Fairfax investigative reporter Kate McClymont, is rather something…

How to treat a royal baby. We had a bit of a dig yesterday at Fairfax’s early print deadlines, saying they were likely to blame for the rather demure royal baby coverage in The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age. Some Crikey readers however thought Fairfax had gotten it right — particularly The Sydney Morning Herald, which buried the announcement in its World News section on page 13.

Mind you, British newspaper The Independent one-upped even Fairfax, putting the announcement on page 16 at the bottom of the “News in Brief” section. It seems to have been a popular decision with their readership.

Expoosive. We’re going to take this as proof the NT News at least shares Crikey‘s disdain for undeserved exclusives. 

Front pages of the day. Although their purview is news, tech sites like Gizmodo (left) and Mashable (right) do seem to look a lot like Apple PR departments when the tech giant announces a new toy …