Hugh Marks confirms ABC secretly engaged recruitment firm and signals sweeping changes at national broadcaster

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The ABC managing director, Hugh Marks, has confirmed he secretly engaged a recruitment company to look for a replacement for news director Justin Stevens after the two disagreed over the direction of ABC News.

Marks said Stevens “did not know” he had begun an international search for a new head of news but it was a necessary move because they “couldn’t get agreement on the way forward”.

Peter Atwater, a professor of economics at William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia, began popularizing the idea of a “K‑shaped economy” shortly after the pandemic began. Analysts were debating on social media what the recovery would look like after the self‑induced coma into which GDP had been plunged, and they floated the usual options: an L (a plunge followed by stagnation), a V (a rebound as sharp as the drop), a W (a renewed recession after a brief uptick)… Though he wasn’t the first to suggest the K. An unknown user — now rebranded as Ivan The K — argued on X (still called Twitter at the time) that the final letter would be a K: meaning some things would recover and others wouldn’t. For Atwater, 65, that message was a revelation that went much further: the more privileged social groups would emerge from the pandemic strengthened in several aspects of their lives, while those at the bottom would be worse off relative to 2019.

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