Nine's James Chessell and ousted columnist John Hewson. (Image: AP)

Nine lives A fair bit of trepidation and muttering has sprung up in the hack ranks of The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald following a few days of deckchair swapping, including some that were simply tossed overboard. First, there was the departure of John Hewson and Amanda Vanstone as columnists and the arrival of Niki Savva. Savva, who worked for Nine chair Peter Costello back when he was treasurer in the Howard government, needed a place to land after leaving The Australian in protest at the thought of sharing a page with Peta Credlin. So far so good: Savva does a readable column. And it’s hard to imagine too many tears being shed for Vanstone’s reactionary thought bubbles. The same remains to be seen for Hewson, after his pupation into something of a dapper climate change warrior gave the former Liberal leader a point of difference. 

Appropriately for such a keen watcher of extreme weather events, Hewson caused a mini-storm at the weekend when he tweeted that he’d been done in on political grounds, complaining the media doesn’t “believe in free press(noun) not controlled or restricted by govt or their sycophantic mates censorship in political or ideological matters”. Newly appointed managing director of publishing (and former Joe Hockey staffer) James Chessell raised some eyebrows when he shot back: “Great take John. Guess the SMH & Age will have to muddle though with those sycophantic ideologues Hartcher, Crowe, Maley, Megalogenis, Gittins, Aly, Savva, Kelly, Carney, Ferguson, Bartholomeusz, Uhlmann, Wright, McGuiness, Knox, Irvine, Szego, Silvester, Price, Baird, Webster…”

Added to all this is the elevation of Tory Maguire, whose partner David Miles is a Liberal-linked lobbyist, to the executive editor spot (Chessell’s old job). Of course, no one would suggest there’s likely to be any undue influence, but it will be another factor that has some hacks watching for evidence of a jump to the right.

Internet laws Fair thee well TikTok COVID Numbers bloke, we hardly knew you. After days of unerringly accurate predictions for the following day’s reported COVID infections, which he attributed to the “Kairouz Probability Theorum”, internet comic Jon-Bernard Kairouz was subject to what looked like an elaborate sting to smoke out his source.

We don’t know about the “Kairouz Probability Theorum”, but Kairouz certainly fulfilled a few other immutable rules. Firstly, he was swiftly cancelled after a video of a racist gag did the rounds. And so it follows — he got a sympathetic profile in the Oz, complete with a picture of him shrugging in a blazer, like the mischievous truth-teller he is. Another rule we’d all do well to remember: beyond a certain point, there is simply nothing that can happen to a politics-adjacent comic who has made a reputation for offending the snowflakes that they aren’t going to turn into just more content. Trust us, we found that one out the hard way.

Ripples Last week, The Australian announced a new podcast, Paul Kelly: columns, in which Paul Kelly, er, reads his columns. We also note in the past days, the ASX share price for Merck and co, marketer in Australia of popular prescription sleeping drug Belsomra, has fallen from a recent high of 78 back to 76, and looks set to continue in that direction. We have no other observation to make on this.

Dandrews doppleganger In yet more evidence of the ominous conspiracy between the various Labor state premiers, a tipster sent in a picture of vaccines being offloaded in Western Australia by a man who bears a quite uncanny resemblance to Dan Andrews.

Guess his back is better?