Newspaper, radio and internet group Fairfax Media will sack 550 staff as it struggles to contain costs following its merger last year with Rural Press and its acquisition of Southern Cross, amid a downturn across the media sector. New seven-day rosters will be introduced at the company’s Sydney newspapers the Sydney Morning Herald and the Sun-Herald in order to avoid duplication and a review undertaken of Melbourne operations.
From the staff memo.
There will be criticism from some, inside and outside the company, that these changes, particularly in editorial, will compromise quality and critical mass in the metro mastheads and their mission. We reject that. This initiative has been carefully constructed by the publishers with full regard for the integrity of their mastheads. Our newspapers will remain true to their heritage and their values of quality and excellence.
Ok then. There are better media commentators who will no doubt analyse this to death but to this blogger the cuts are just another installment in the slow decline of the standalone newspaper as a community and public service.
Update: The News stable weighs in with Brad Norington and Mark Day providing some good commentary on the cuts as do Caroline Overington and John Lyons.
Phil
If you want some US context for this, the following work from the Project for Excellence in Journalism is of interest:
link
as is this report:
link
Put simply, two jobs are completely disappearing from within newspapers: sub-editing and staff photographers. They are being outsourced, off-shored (e.g. sub-editing being done in India), or being required to be taken on by the journalists themselves.
There is a big generational divide within news organisations about the preparedness to accept this as the new environment for journalism.
“the slow decline of the standalone newspaper as a community and public service.”
Fairfax is a company with shareholders who expect the management to run the company to make a profit.
Unfortunately, broadsheet newspapers lose money. The only way they can keep going is if they are located in companies where they are cross subsidised by other parts of the company, as in the Murdoch empire. Or if they are owned by proprietors who are so rich they don’t care about losing money because they value the influence that the newspaper brings.
Surely the point is that the current business model, to use the jargon, isn’t working either. As in reduce quality, increase lifestyle pap and develop web based media that neither understands the medium, nor the readers it is trying to attract.
In short I don’t understand the point in trashing the brand for the sake of attracting a new audience that doesn’t exist.
LOL Terry – I’ve noticed the dearth of subediting in the AGE for years. It’s a disaster, but presumably about to get worse.
Isn’t the real problem that no-one want to pay to read the news? I certainly don’t – I can’t see the point, when I can listen to the radio or look on the intynet. Buy a wad of paper and ink that’ll go into the waste stream within a few hours? No thanks. Sometimes I’ll get one if I’m taking a bus or plane trip so I can do a sudoku, but that’s about it.
d
“Isn’t the real problem that no-one want to pay to read the news?”
That’s always been true, but partially offset by people paying for classified ads. Now they are going online. And the costs of producing the content, and printing and distributing the paper itself keep going up.
Not always true, but true enough for a very long time. :^)
Let me ask a question. There seems to be an implication that it would be a bad thing if “the standalone newspaper” went away. Why?
I really have trouble buying this ‘newspaper as a community and public service’ idea. A newspaper is just a device to display advertising, which is, I suppose, a public service, but somehow I don’t think that’s what Phil meant.
d
In breaking news………
Andrew Jaspan, Editor in chief of The Age, has been the first victim.
YAY!!!
*ahem*
It’s no secret that Jaspan was terribly disliked by the Age journos. What’s the next installment going to be?
they’re distributing free copies of ‘the advertiser’ outside the cafe of the uni I work at
I like the Age, have a subscription and read it every day. Also have a cheap sub to The Australian through uni and pick it up from the newsagent, but increasingly, I don’t bother as it has become so awful.
I’m sad to see the cost cutting and editorial sackings, but I wonder if there are better ways to produce a newspaper, with less content but better quality. Thjere is so much of thr Age that goes unread, and often it isn’t just there to attract expensive advertising.
I’ll like to see less pages and better content.
“It’s no secret that Jaspan was terribly disliked by the Age journos. What’s the next installment going to be?”
His main problem seems to have been with overiding Sydney Fairfax management team, from what I gathered, Fine.
80 pct of newspaper revenues come from ads. The bulk of these have now moved online and have separated from the journalism they formerly cross-subsidised. You go to seek.com.au because you’re looking for a job. The ads have utility in themselves.
The days of journos plying their trade in large media companies are drawing to a close – just as musicians are separating from record companies.
There’s no point getting misty-eyed about it.
Spose there is that, Mr Denmore.
Journalists have obviously been an endangered species for quite some time.
Get rid of those middle people.
Do not tear up… just watch that advertising.
So satisfying for the deeply fried brain.
“I’d like to see less pages and better content”
It’s obviously not just newspapers who are now facing a dearth of sub-editors, as per Terry.
I’d like to see FEWER pages and better content
I cannot imagine I will notice the absence of the sub-editors; I don’t think anyone’s been checking the grammar for a couple of years at least, so I suppose I’ll just see more typos. If the Poms can put up with the Graun, I’m sure I can survive the Synney Morgin Harold. I suppose it’s unlikely that they’ll dispose of Gerard Henderson or Miranda Devine? she says hopefully.
They could probably employ about half a dozen actual journalists for the money that they pay those propaganda machines.
We need an Aussie Scott Templeton.
While Fairfax journalists continue to produce some quality editorial, particularly The Age Communications Editor Matthew Ricketson, ahd The Fin’s Neil Shoebridge, one wonders how the company has justified for this long the pay cheques of talentless ‘blogumnists’ such as Wotsername Hush at the SMH. More worrying is that someone (Sssshhh) is being allowed to populate potent centimetres with projectile neuro-spew week after week. Sssshhh is not the only culprit, mind, but as a walking cliche, is as good an example as any. I digress, however… I only hope it is the Kellies or Kristys or whatever who find themselves with spare time after this week, and that Fairfax’s many fine scribes are rewarded with security of tenure and shiny new stationery. And perhaps a break from the mindless drivel that must pass between the cubicles of overpaid whiners… perhaps a bit of quiet is nigh.
Jobs get cut in all sorts of companies all the time – why is it that when it’s a newspaper – it becomes big news.
Phil closed with a fortuitous comment concerning the role of the OZ media section, one of the few functional components of the GG’s entire repertoir.
From today’s (3/9) update from Brad Norrington, comes a detailed update that focusses on Fairfax’s reneging on an undertaking from executive Lloyd Whish-Wilson
(try saying that while you’re pissed!), concerning “no recriminations” involving ” matters arising from the dispute”.
We then learn that:
“Carlton’s backpage spot on Saturday SMH was taken by columnist Miranda Devine”.
Is this a permanent fixture?
Am told the term “scab” is an “old fashioned” term.
Can any contributor offer a more accurate sumnation, as to this situation?
The strife with Fairfax of course is, they ain’t selling newspapers. Their business model needs, and is getting, a remedial adjustment.
Nobody is reading the crap written by the Fairfax journalists, so they are dispensed with, what did they expect to happen?
Instead of opinion, they could always try writing, you know, news.