Are journalists just 'content providers for advertising platforms'?

First, the latest news, Australia's federal workplace minister expresses concerns about the strike:

(AAP) Fairfax strike of concern: Gillard

FEDERAL Workplace Relations Minister Julia Gillard says she is concerned about the industrial dispute affecting Fairfax daily newspapers and wants quality and diversity to be maintained in the media.

Journalists from Fairfax are on strike because of management plans to axe 550 jobs.

Ms Gillard told Network Ten today she was "concerned'' by the developments.

"I am someone who is concerned about the quality and diversity of our media market.''

The deputy prime minister called on both parties to talk.

"There's never been an industrial dispute in this country that wasn't solved by talking.

"I think when we look at the Fairfax dispute we need to remember that rule.''


And more editorial in support of The Sydney Morning Herald, this time from its rival paper The Daily Telegraph.

The Fairfax job cuts and the dragging down of an icon
Silver Surfer
Saturday, August 30, 2008 at 09:13pm


The shenanigans of the past week at Fairfax, publishers of The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald where journos, artists and photographers are on strike over plans for mass sackings, are another example of a big company putting its profits before people, but in this case we’re not just talking about its staff. There’s the loyal core of readers to consider in this as well, and it’s a key issue here because media companies really are a different kind of animal. Be that as it may, it’s still a classic case of the old muddle-headed, knee-jerk reverse thinking that too often seems to provide a quick and easy answer to the executives of corporate Australia, who appear to the average punter more interested in saving their own bonuses and delivering dividends to shareholders than doing the right thing in the first place by their customers, staff and clients.


There’s no doubt here they’ve run out of ideas; advertising revenues are down, no one’s buying the product – at least not in the numbers required to make them highly profitable operations, and readership has been on a steady decline – and so the only answer they can come up with is to make the situation worse by giving everyone the flick. Smart move. The so-called rivers of gold once provided by Fairfax’s classified advertising obviously aren’t translating to a challenging, new era in media brought about by the digital explosion, and even before last week’s announcement, staff numbers had been pared back.

One of the worst things about these kinds of disputes (at any company) is that invariably, the axe falls on the people who are working their guts out to put out a decent product, not the people who’ve either run them into the ground in the first place or who are more interested in stripping them down to increase returns. The staff at Fairfax now face a kind of nail-biting reverse lottery with 550 job cuts on the cards and too many will be wondering in the coming weeks whether they can still pay their mortgages. It won’t be an issue for the executives, though - they’ll still be pocketing the big paypackets and carrying on as usual. For now, anyway. MORE