From the Newsroom to the Bedroom: The journalist who found a new way to fund his reporting

It is a tale of two professions: journalism and sex work.

In one corner, working in this job will see you pulling all-nighters, pushing your physical and emotional wellbeing to the limits, and occasionally having to be vague about what you really do to avoid that conversation.

In the other corner sits sex work.

For former Southern Cross Austereo investigative journalist Bension Siebert, 33, the line between the two became unexpectedly real after he was made redundant by the broadcaster in early 2025.

Because while losing a journalism job ultimately led Siebert into sex work, the money he now earns from sex work is helping him do something the media industry increasingly struggles to pay for: investigative journalism.

Siebert revealed his career change in an essay published by news commentary platform Cheek Media, saying he decided to speak publicly after a client threatened to “out” him.

“This essay is me beating him to it: I am proud to be a sex worker,” Siebert wrote.

When the journalism job disappears

Siebert’s CV is hardly that of someone who simply couldn’t cut it in journalism.

He spent six years reporting for Adelaide news outlet InDaily, collecting the Best Young Journalist award three times at the SA Media Awards along the way.

After leaving InDaily in 2020, the UniSA graduate spent three years reporting for the ABC before joining Southern Cross Austereo.

There, he worked as a senior investigative journalist on The Briefing, the daily news podcast housed on SCA’s LiSTNR platform.

Then came the part of the story that has become grimly familiar across Australian media.

In early 2025, Siebert was made redundant as part of a round of job cuts at the broadcaster.

What happened next was considerably less conventional.

Siebert wrote that his first paid encounter left him with “a dozen $50 notes”. It also delivered a fairly brutal lesson in the economics of his former profession.

He soon discovered he could “earn as much in five hours of sex work as I earned in my best-paid week as a journalist”.

“It was like I’d stumbled onto a cheat code to capitalism,” he wrote.

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A new way to fund old ambitions

For Siebert, the pivot wasn't an exit from journalism - it was a way of staying in it. He said the income had allowed him to keep pursuing investigative reporting at a time when journalism jobs, particularly investigative roles, had become increasingly scarce.

He described using the earnings to "save" his investigative career, including funding interstate reporting trips for stories he intended to publish "with or without the support of a mainstream media organisation."

"Sex work is often difficult and sometimes dangerous work but, in many ways, I felt better off," he wrote. "I had complete control over when to work and when to rest, and lots of spare time.

"I could pursue my hobbies, and a full social life, and a full love life, and prioritise things I had always been too busy for."