An award-winning former Adelaide journalist has revealed his new career as a sex worker after being made redundant by Southern Cross Austereo.
Bension Siebert was a reporter for six years at online Adelaide news outlet InDaily, where he was named Best Young Journalist three times in the SA Media Awards.
On Sunday, news commentary blog Cheek Media published an essay in which Mr Siebert revealed he had become a sex worker after losing his job at Southern Cross Austereo, as part of a round of redundancies in early 2025.
Mr Siebert, 33, decided to go public with his career move after one his clients discovered he was a journalist and threatened to “out” him because he was unavailable for a Saturday night rendezvous.
“This essay is me beating him to it: I am proud to be a sex worker,” Mr Siebert wrote.
After leaving InDaily in 2020, the UniSA graduate worked as a reporter for the ABC for three years before moving to Southern Cross Austereo, where he was a senior investigative journalist for The Briefing, a news podcast on radio app LiSTNR.
In the essay, Mr Siebert wrote he had pocketed “a dozen $50 notes” from his first paid sexual liaison and 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.
He told The Advertiser the response to his essay had been “completely overwhelming” and entirely positive.
“Given the subject matter, I’m somewhat surprised there hasn’t been really anything negative. I’m really grateful to all the people who’ve commented and sent me messages and emails, and I feel very supported coming out like this,” Mr Siebert said.
He said thousands of reporting jobs had been gutted from the media sector over the past decade, and investigative journalism jobs had become especially rare.
In the essay, he described using sex work to “save” his investigative journalism career, using his hard-earned funds on interstate reporting trips for stories he planned 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.”
Southern Cross Austereo’s restructuring in February 2025 cost the jobs of 8 per cent of its workforce – about 140 staff – trade publication B&T reported.
Another round of redundancies at the broadcaster in October 2025 was reportedly linked to the introduction of AI-assisted editorial processes, which included AI voices reading news bulletins.
Mr Siebert has updated his LinkedIn to describe himself as a self-employed investigative journalist and “independent s*x worker”.