Inquiry Journalism

Crikey has stuck its nose into plenty of interesting troughs over its 18-year history. Some savory, some smelly, hopefully most of them relevant and revealing.

Now we’ve just added a whole lot more noses in the trough.

In two weeks, Crikey launches Inq, our biggest single investment in journalism in the almost two decades since Stephen Mayne conceived the idea of an outlier email newsletter to scrutinise Australian politics, money and power.

Inq comprises a team of a dozen reporters and editors pursuing what we’re calling “inquiry journalism”. Their remit is to unearth issues that need to be exposed, interrogated, investigated, explained or deconstructed. Then dig, prod, probe, sniff around, analyse, sort the data, follow the money, connect the dots and never stop asking questions.

The result, we hope, will be a steady stream of stories and investigations that, individually and collectively, shine light on what’s happening under Australia’s hood and behind the veil of power, influence, money and cosy networks.

This is a big deal for Crikey. We’re a small, fiercely independent publisher compared with the likes of the ABC, News Corp and Nine Entertainment. Inq is our attempt to play in the bigger sandpit of Australian investigative journalism. And, we hope, to do it in a distinctive way that is unconstrained by establishment preferences or ideological frameworks.

Inq will sit within the Crikey website and Inq stories will arrive in the daily Crikey newsletter. All Inq stories will part of a Crikey subscription. You can read more about Inq here, and meet the Inq team here.

As our media falls into fewer hands — much of it controlled from boardrooms in New York and London, much of it part of entertainment conglomerates for whom journalism is a peripheral activity — we believe there’s a worthwhile, dare we say important, place for a locally-owned independent voice that puts inquiry journalism at its epicentre.

Inq launches on Monday week. Please join us for the ride. We hope plenty of people will need seatbelts.