Joyce and Campion drop privacy complaint, farewell to two veteran journalists, Google steps onto Seven’s turf, plus other media tidbits of the day. 

Campion drops privacy complaint. Barnaby Joyce’s partner Vikki Campion has reportedly dropped a privacy complaint she submitted to the Australian Press Council over photographs The Daily Telegraph took of her while pregnant. Campion told 9Finance last week she’d dropped the complaint so she can “focus on motherhood”.

Campion and Joyce have been heavily criticised for complaining about their privacy being breached while taking $150,000 for a paid interview with Seven’s Sunday Night last week, and as Joyce reportedly lobbied against a safe zone outside abortion clinics in New South Wales. On Sunday, he tweeted a video of photographer taking pictures of him outside church, calling again for a tort on privacy (something the Abbott government rejected when Joyce was a senior member, as our politics editor Bernard Keane has pointed out).

Vale. Journalists around the country are today remembering two legends of their profession, Deborah Cameron and Ben Hills. Former ABC Sydney radio mornings presenter Cameron died on Saturday after a long illness, and tributes have been flowing from her friends and former colleagues at the ABC and Fairfax. Hills had worked for both The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age, including as an investigative reporter and foreign correspondent based in Japan.

The revolving door. Red Symons, who was dumped by the ABC after 15 years presenting the Melbourne radio breakfast program, will now be on-air with his former competitor Neil Mitchell. Symons will appear as a regular guest on Mitchell’s 3AW program, he announced last week.

Old media out, Google in. Google has increased its hold in the old media-heavy Sydney suburb of Pyrmont, buying the building currently leased by Seven. The Sydney Morning Herald reports that Google has bought the building from property developer Aqualand, which bought the building from Seven in 2015. Seven is moving to Redfern later this year. Google took a floor at Fairfax’s Pyrmont headquarters in 2013, and earlier this year did a deal with Fairfax to take over the newspaper company’s lease on the rest of the company. Fairfax is in the process of looking for another home for its headquarters in Sydney.

How Vice was built on a bluff. After years of hype and a meteoric rise in the media business, Vice is now struggling to deliver on its promises. New York magazine has taken an interesting look at Vice’s rise, and how it ended up where it is now:

‘How do you scale the essence of a punk-rock magazine into a multibillion-dollar media company? There is no real answer,’ a former Vice executive who remains fond of the brand told me. ‘At some point, what got you there isn’t what you are.’

Glenn Dyer’s TV Ratings. Seven won Sunday and Monday nights — easily in fact. House Rules last night had its best audience so far this season, 1.40 million, and widened the gap on Masterchef which scraped together 1.16 million. But House Rules again failed to top the million viewer mark in the metros with 861,000, depending on a strong showing in the regions. Masterchef with 885,000 viewers was more popular in the metros.

In regional markets a very solid night for Seven with the 6pm News on top with 667,000 viewers, House Rules with 548,000, Seven News/Today Tonight with 518,000, Home and Away with 411,000, and the 7pm ABC News with 365,000. Read the rest at the Crikey website.