If Nine’s ‘tacky’, what’s Seven News? The Seven newsroom in Sydney was abuzz yesterday afternoon after the comments from news boss Peter Meakin in Crikey. The head honcho labelled as “tacky” Channel Nine’s campaign to promote Karl Stefanovic as the Gold Logie winner this year, but the talk was very different among Seven journalists. “Tacky” was how they were describing the approach to their own news service during the Sunrise program when the Gold Logie winner was buried and hardly mentioned in the story, except when they congratulated Packed to the Rafters — a Seven program of course.

Linnell’s gone, so what of The Sunday Mail? Former Daily Telegraph editor Garry Linnell isn’t the only News Limited metro editor likely to be on the move. Linnell was asked to “step down” from his post but his circulation figures aren’t the worst in the stable. It is the editors whose papers registered more than a 5% drop in circulation that are most at risk and Brisbane’s Sunday Mail editor Scott Thompson is understood to be on thin ice at Holt Street with his recent poor figures in a monopoly market.

Story update: Phillip Island dingo mauling. In early March, Crikey ran a heartfelt story examining the continuing pain and suffering caused by a dingo bite sustained by four-year-old Matilda Arnold at a Phillip Island wildlife park. Matilda had her finger severed in the feral attack and is required to wear a special glove and travel hundreds of kilometres each year to Dandenong Hospital for ongoing treatment — a 220-kilometre round trip. But until the expose appeared, the park’s insurer CGU had refused to pay the family any benefits, suggesting instead that Matilda was to blame for her own mauling.

Just hours after our story appeared CGU fired off a letter to the Arnolds’ lawyers Maurice Blackburn referring to the item and offering the family a financial settlement. A cheque of $1134.75 was received three weeks later, which while it doesn’t cover petrol expenses, is a reasonable start. Sue Arnold told Crikey that, despite the payment, she remained thousands of dollars out of pocket and that most of that money would be spent on her ambulance bill of $735. While Matilda is slowly recovering, petrol costs of about $1500 remain unpaid.