Fairfax cuts to the bone

Last week Fairfax announced it would cut 120 full time positions, leading journalists to walk out in protest.

Meanwhile, the pressures on Fairfax and its journalists are mounting all the time, as we saw last week ....


JUANITA PHILLIPS: Fairfax journalists have gone on strike over yet another round of job cuts. The equivalent of 120 full-time positions will go. The union claims that’s a quarter of the workforce. Staff say they are already doing more work with fewer resources and such deep cuts will jeopardise quality.

— ABC News, 17 March, 2016

Another month another body blow for Fairfax journalists, with these latest cuts coming at:

The Age and Sunday Age.

The Sydney Morning Herald and The Sun Herald.

And the Australian Financial Review.

And the fact they are so large and came without warning sparked an immediate angry walk out right across the country.


NICK DOLE: Staff in Sydney were joined by colleagues in Canberra, Melbourne, Newcastle and Brisbane. They were given the news in an email ... In a statement CEO Greg Hywood said: ‘The initiatives we’ve proposed today are necessary to sustain high quality journalism.’

— ABC News, 17 March, 2016

It seems a strange way to do it. And Fairfax journalists no longer believe it’s the answer.


ADELE FERGUSON: Fairfax is talking about ‘our key competitive advantage is quality journalism’ and you just wonder, how can you keep creating quality journalism if there’s virtually no one there to produce it?

— 774 ABC Melbourne, Mornings with Jon Faine, 18 March, 2016

So how deep will the cuts bite?

The union claims it could be one job in four.

Fairfax Media says it’s only one job in eight.

The truth is probably one in six.

What’s driving them is that print advertising revenue is still falling sharply.

But that doesn’t make it any easier for staff or readers to stomach.

As the Herald’s Marcus Strom told Media Watch:


I’ve been at Fairfax for 12 years and we’ve had a redundancy round every two years. We’ve been sliced thinner and thinner. This time they have come at us with a chainsaw.

— Marcus Strom, Journalist, Sydney Morning Herald, Statement to Media Watch, 17 March, 2016

The Herald’s political editor Peter Hartcher says journalists at Fairfax support the company’s pursuit of digital audiences. But he also told Media Watch they are:


... deeply concerned that managers promise undiminished quality with an ever-diminishing number of journalists. Because at some point the two become irreconcilable.

— Peter Hartcher, Political Editor, Sydney Morning Herald, Statement to Media Watch, 17 March, 2016

And to emphasise that point, we’ve been contacted this week by a number of long-time readers of the Herald who have cancelled their subscription. Like this one who is fed up with the clickbait on the website.


I’ve had enough. “Vatican ‘sex bomb’ furious at Pell” is a click too far. I did not click. And I will not click an SMH article again, or have the paper delivered. My digital subscription is cancelled effective 18 March, the last day of the current period. You are right that ‘clicks’ signal interest, but they do not signal worth.

— Joe Roach, Letter to the Sydney Morning Herald, 9 March, 2016

Fairfax’s websites are of course not the only ones to be heading in that direction.

The Daily Mail and Daily Telegraph are arguably even worse.

And Fairfax journalists are not the only ones to be facing cuts,

Britain’s Independent newspaper will publish its last-ever print edition this week, putting around 100 journalists out of work.

And, as The Australian reported last Friday:


The Guardian is to cut 250 staff as Kath Viner, the new editor, looks to cut costs after the newspaper group burnt through £80 million of cash in one year.

— The Australian, 18 March, 2016

As yet, there are no cuts planned for The Guardian’s Australian operation, which employs some 62 journalists

But The Australian told us recently that jobs ARE being lost at News Corp.


News Corp to cut 55 journalism roles

— The Australian, 23 November, 2015

And we’re now hearing rumours that even deeper cuts are being sought

So we asked the company to tell us:


How many journalism jobs have been cut from News Corp Australia titles (national, metro, regional & online) in the past 12 months, through voluntary and/or forced redundancies?

— Media Watch, Email to News Corp, 18 March, 2016


We also asked whether more job losses are planned. But News Corp’s Stephen Browning quickly fired back an email to say:


We are not going to comment I'm afraid.

— Stephen Browning, Head of Corporate Affairs, News Corp Australia, Response to Media Watch Questions,
18 March, 2016

Meanwhile, we couldn’t miss this news last week in the trade magazine, ProPrint:

Coles slashes spending on print

Supermarket giant Coles has slashed thousands of dollars from its weekly print advertising allotment, cutting over half of its spending in magazines and newspapers.

— ProPrint, 17 March, 2016

As ProPrint pointed out, if Coles does halve the $11 million a year it spends on newspaper print advertising News Corp’s tabloids will feel much of the pain.

So is anybody’s job or newspaper safe?

Not really, as finance expert Alan Kohler observed gloomily:


The question that keeps all journalists awake at night is whether there is a viable business at all, or whether they and their employers slip into a death spiral, in which the shrinking newsroom reduces sales and revenue, requiring further cost cutting

— The Australian, 18 March, 2016

Would I go into the media if I were starting my career right now?

I don’t know ... it’s certainly getting tougher

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