Luke McIlveen confirmed as new Nine executive editor

Former Daily Mail boss and Fox Sports editor Luke McIlveen has been appointed as the new executive editor of the Nine papers’ metropolitan mastheads, replacing the newly promoted Tory Maguire. 

Maguire, who steps into the managing director of publishing role following the departure of James Chessell to the consulting world, confirmed the appointment in a message sent to staff, and described McIlveen as “one of the most senior and experienced editors in the Australian media, and is the industry stand-out when it comes to digital audience and results”. 

The move comes after McIlveen was named among the frontrunners for the role in reporting by Capital Brief.

McIlveen started in the industry in 1996, first as a clerk in the circulation department at News Corp, before joining The Australian as a political reporter in 2000. He worked in the NSW parliamentary press gallery until 2002, before moving to the federal gallery until 2005. 

He took over news.com.au as editor-in-chief in 2011, and left for online rival Daily Mail in 2013 in a bitter move that saw him walked out of News Corp’s Holt St headquarters and a legal action launched over the timing of his departure. 

The parties settled in December 2013, with McIlveen describing his return to the Murdoch family in 2017 as without “any sense of bad blood”. 

“A senior News Corp person said to me shortly afterwards, ‘We can stop fighting now. You’ve got the right jersey on’,” he told Mediaweek in 2018. 

Since leaving Fox Sports in November 2023 amid a number of restructures at News Corp, McIlveen has been working in media consulting as a principal at his own firm, McIlveen Moran Media. 

Maguire said “crucially, (McIlveen) is a person who stands up for journalism and journalists.” 

McIlveen gave an interview in 2010 to The Australian, then as the editor of the Manly Daily, where he criticised “the number of pious sloths who mistake laziness for journalistic ethics, without bothering to find out how their readers or viewers might see a story” as his biggest frustration with modern journalism. McIlveen referred to a controversial Seven story at the time about former NSW transport minister David Campbell, which showed him secretly visiting a gay men’s club, as a “cracker”, criticising Crikey’s coverage of the story as “embarrassing” and the Fairfax papers as “dross”. 

While ACMA cleared Seven after a number of complaints over the story, finding there was an “identifiable public interest” in broadcasting it, The Sydney Morning Herald apologised in 2022 after gossip writer Andrew Hornery outed actor Rebel Wilson in a column.

McIlveen will start on January 29, and be based in Sydney, at Nine’s North Sydney headquarters. 

Is McIlveen the right person for the top Nine job, and what will he bring to the table? Let us know your thoughts by writing to letters@crikey.com.au. Please include your full name to be considered for publication. We reserve the right to edit for length and clarity.