Wotif founder Graeme Wood to fund news website

Internet entrepreneur Graeme Wood has again re-entered the realm of public debate, emerging as the key bankroller of Monica Attard’s new online journalism venture.

Crikey can reveal the Wotif.com founder, whose personal wealth is valued at about $372 million, has provided the seed money for The Global Mail, set to launch in January or February next year.

The cash for the venture will be sourced from Wood directly, with the possibility of other sources to follow. In the lead-up to last year’s federal election the philanthropist flicked the Greens a cool $1.6 million to fund prime-time TV ads, the biggest political donation in Australian history.

But The Global Mail marks his first intervention into the realm of blue chip investigative journalism.

Attard told Crikey the start-up would employ four senior journalists abroad in New York City, Paris and Asia and seven locally in a Sydney HQ. Local staff would be split between young up-and-comers with “the capacity to fly” and more senior appointments.

“It’ll be a combination of just off-the-cycle analysis but will also engage with it,” Attard said.

The respected ABC veteran said The Global Mail was entirely not-for-profit and would feature neither subscriptions nor advertising: “It is entirely, utterly in the public interest.”

She confirmed the site’s news stories would include cutting-edge multimedia elements like video and audio. Each local reporter will follow their own “beat”, raising the prospect of a news-breaking juggernaut punching well above its weight.

Attard is the current presenter of ABC Local Radio’s Sunday Profile (which also airs on Radio National) and has a few weeks left on-air before she wades into the online space full-time.

Crikey understands funding will be secured from Wood personally, and not his Graeme Wood Foundation, which holds about $20 million in assets and last year gave away about $1 million to a range of arts charities. While Attard stayed mum on specifics, the estimated cost of the start-up could stretch to well over $2-3 million a year.

Wood, a keen bushwalker, has emerged as a prominent voice on the philanthropic scene in recent years and also has some prior experience in the news business. In 2008 he set up business news aggregator Wotnews in addition to the ASX-listed Wotif.com, which he founded in 1999 and is now worth $1.4 billion. Wood is no longer a Wotif executive, but remains on the board with about a 25% stake.

Following on from his purchase last year of 27,000 hectares of pristine Tasmanian native forest from notorious logging firm Gunns, he recently attempted to buy the company’s Triabunna woodchip mill before it was snaffled late last week by timber haulage operator Ron O’Connor.

“I’ve been thinking about this for some time, and Monica approached me with the idea. She seemed the ideal person,” Wood says

“I’d been aware that something like that would be a good thing to do.”

This article first appeared on Crikey.