In July 2011, it was announced that Crick was returning to Channel 4 News as political correspondent, replacing Cathy Newman under political editor Gary Gibbon. He made his last appearance on "Newsnight" on 29 July 2011. He was replaced by Allegra Stratton. The following September, he said in an interview for "The Independent": "I was 19 years on Newsnight and 18 of them were extremely happy and then towards the end, about a year ago, they made it clear to me that they wanted me to stop being the political editor and do another job, which was ill-defined." The journalist Nick Cohen, in appraising "Newsnight" and BBC practices shortly after the departure of Crick and other journalists, wrote that "Crick adheres instead to the honourable belief that the job of the reporter is to create as much trouble as possible. He lives by his creed by bringing in scoop after scoop."