High-profile columnist is SACKED after three decades with a brutal phone call – and unleashes on newspaper company in furious Facebook post
- Elizabeth Farrelly sacked after three decades with the Sydney Morning Herald
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A high-profile opinion columnist has hit back at a newspaper company that sacked her after three decades of service with a five minute phone call.
Architecture critic and writer Elizabeth Farrelly will no longer contribute a weekly column to the Sydney Morning Herald after incoming editor Bevan Shields terminated her employment.
Ms Farrelly revealed she had been sacked in a furious post to Facebook on Sunday afternoon where she described the move as a ‘ruthless king-hit’.
The publication stated the decision was made by Mr Shields after the columnist failed to disclose she had registered as a Labor Party candidate.
Ms Farrelly recently published a piece in which she blasted Liberal and independent councillors in the Strathfield electorate, where she had registered to run.
An editor’s note that announced her registration was added to the column last Friday, however by then the journalist had decided not to run for a seat.
High-profile columnist Elizabeth Farrelly (pictured) will no longer contribute a weekly column to the Sydney Morning Herald after editor Bevan Shields terminated her employment
On Sunday, Mr Shields phoned Ms Farrelly to inform her she had been let go from the newspaper, a decision she later blasted on social media.
‘Today, after a working relationship lasting more than three decades, my time with the Sydney Morning Herald came to an abrupt end,’ she wrote.
‘According to the five-minute out-of-the-blue phone call I received from the new editor on the other side of the world, this termination is due to an apparent lack of transparency on my part.’
Ms Farrelly said her failure to disclose her registration to the Labor Party was an oversight on her behalf and had not meant to intentionally mislead her readers.
She said while she had been interested in taking a crack at a state or federal seat or joining the local council the final decision had been ‘unresolved’.
While only ‘vaguely interested’ the columnist decided to register her interest online on the final day of registrations to keep the option open.
The publication stated the decision was made by Mr Shields after the columnist (pictured) failed to disclose she had registered as a Labor Party candidate
‘I was not preselected for the Labor federal candidate, nor for the Labor Council ticket, so I did not run in the recent council election,’ she continued the post.
While Ms Farrelly did admit to campaigning for the Labor Party in the lead-up to the election she said it ‘did not cross her mind’ to notify her employer.
More to come.
