BLANK CANVA. HOW BUSINESS JOURNALISM BOOSTS ‘BILLIONAIRES’ PART 316

What’s the difference between a business pages news story and the corporate press release it was written from? About eighteen hours.

Business journos are happy to stenograph corporate goodvibes material because it’s easier, and it means they’ll get a gig writing them when the axe comes down eventually. Behold the latest example with breathless reports that Canva founders Melanie Perkins and Cliff Obrecht are to ‘give away’ their ‘multi-billion’ dollar fortune, which has put them right up there, and beyond Jamie Packer, Clive Palmer, Kerry Stokes etc etc.

Well yeah, kinda. Canva, a DIY template-based online graphics design firm, is now valued at $40 billion, after a fresh injection of $200 million investment last week. True, the company is expanding at a huge rate, with $1 billion in revenue, which has doubled every year since its 2013 founding. Information on profits is harder to find, but that doesn’t seem to matter these days.

Nevertheless, the founders’ wealth lies in shares, which cover a very complex app, and any firesale would send them plummeting.

So hold off on building the orphanages.

The duo’s donation so far are reported at $10 million. Very nice too. But nicer still would be if business journalism covered capitalism at its real value, and distinguished between iron -ore mines, and goldmines in the sky.