RBA lifts rates to a 15-year high — and rejects Labor’s inflation blame game The Reserve Bank has pushed the cash rate to 4.6 per cent, warning more hikes may be needed, and explicitly pointed to domestic capacity pressures rather than overseas conflict as the key inflation driver. That sharpens the political stakes for Treasurer Jim Chalmers and the Albanese government, with multiple papers framing the decision as a direct rebuttal of Labor’s public messaging and a fresh hit to household budgets. Covered by: Australian Financial Review, Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, The Australian, The West Australian, Herald Sun, The Advertiser. Cost-of-living crunch deepens as economists warn: more pain may be “needed” Beyond the headline hike, the coverage turns to what comes next: analysts argue inflation is proving sticky even as growth weakens, meaning avoiding further rises could require harsher outcomes like higher unemployment and falling property prices. P

Pradesh 24 Gujarati Editor-in-Chief and CEO Rahul Singh has clarified the context behind a video circulating on social media showing VHP leader Jwalit Mehta visiting the channel’s newsroom and presenting trishuls to women television anchors. The video was part of the Hindutva organisation’s Trishul Deeksha project. Singh, in a post on X, said the video was being shared without context and was being falsely linked to the 2002 Gujarat riots. According to Singh, the woman seen in the video is 20-year-old anchor Piya Gadhvi, who was subjected to a coordinated cyberbullying campaign after reporting on self-styled godman and convicted murderer Rampal. Singh said Gadhvi received thousands of abusive calls and that one person allegedly threatened to create and circulate AI-generated nude images of her. He clarified that the trishul was presented in the newsroom after the threats as a symbolic gesture of solidarity with Gadhvi. “You may agree or disagree with the symbol

Journalists in Khatima have urged the Uttarakhand government to expedite the construction of the proposed Press Club building. Led by Khatima Press Club president Hari Narayan Agarwal, a group of journalists submitted a memorandum to Chief Minister Pushkar Singh Dhami on Friday, seeking immediate instructions to start the construction. Speaking with Influencing India, Agarwal said, “A plot for the Press Club building has been allotted by the state government. However, construction has not yet started. Hence, we have given a letter to the CM, demanding that the construction be started soon.” Gorakhnath, Mustaqeem Malik, Deepak Phulera, Sunil Saini, Sapan Rai, Paramjit Singh Pamma, and Sundar Bahadur were present.  

Veteran journalist and former editor of The Hindu BusinessLine, Karunakara Kurup, popularly known as NK Kurup, passed away in Kerala on 26 September 2026. He was 72. Kurup began his journalism career with The Economic Times and The Financial Express in Mumbai before joining The Hindu group. He went on to build a distinguished career in business journalism and served as Editor of BusinessLine until his retirement in 2014. 

There's one recent story that sticks out in News Corp Australia cadet Georgia Palgan's mind, for reasons beyond the story itself. She was working from home on a piece for news.com.au, preparing to interview a former cast member of the reality TV show Below Deck Mediterranean about an ongoing court case involving a current cast member, and about his own experience on the show. "The second I plugged in my laptop, we had this massive power outage," she told Influencing. "I live in the Blue Mountains, and the outage was going to last all day. I had to drive 40 minutes to my local McDonald's, and I stayed out there all day, working on their wi-fi, getting the story done.  “I did the interview in my car and had a really great chat with this reality TV star, and the piece went up as soon as it could. It did pretty well; I was pretty proud.”  Palgan counts it as one of the standout moments of her 12-month cadetship. Another came during her time at Network News, working with Seni

Media agency leaders are sounding the alarm over declining investment in the Australian media. But they remain sharply divided on whether mandatory spend requirements or softer "go local first" approaches are the best solution. As Danielle Long recently reported for The Australian, the debate intensified this week after industry players rejected suggestions that brands should be mandated to commit a percentage of media spend to Australian platforms, calling such proposals commercially impractical. Instead, a "go local first" strategy, where agencies prioritise local suppliers when performance metrics are closely matched, has emerged as a more workable alternative. "In cases where there's little difference, I think planners could be supported by clients to 'go local first'. The question is whether that's going to be a material swing of the needle or is it too little, too late?" Peter Horgan, chief executive of independent agency Joy, to

Craig Butt, who joined The Age as a data journalist trainee in 2011, doesn’t remember colleagues being hostile to data journalism in its early days, but he does recall some scepticism from old-timers. One coworker who saw him beavering away over spreadsheets stopped to offer the sage advice, "You'll never get a story out of a computer." Fifteen years on, Butt is National Data Editor of The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald, coordinating data projects that run across the Nine mastheads, including Brisbane Times and WAtoday. He has also spent more than a decade teaching, creating what is believed to be the first dedicated data journalism subject offered in Australia. An unusual journalism student Butt's path into journalism began with a U-turn. He started out studying maths and physics before deciding science wasn't for him and switching to journalism at Monash University, where he completed a BA from 2007 to 2010. "This was probably around the time