Cuts in Australian media

It seems, not surprisingly, that the move to pear down newspaper staff is spreading from the US and UK to smaller markets like Australia.

Fairfax media is commencing a major restructuring program of the mastheads in its stable in Australia and New Zealand, including The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age.

Is it the management's only option - in a climate of declining profit margins - to cut staff and downsize the editorial process? I would venture to say that yes, a restructuring may be necessary, to prime the company towards new media and importantly, other platforms, but that there should be a move towards specialist journalism, eg. more high-end analysis type articles for a market that is willing to pay, rather than towards more general reporting and lifetyle-type features. I think it's important to note that general news and entertainment/lifestyle stories can be eaily obtained from other sources on the internet, mobile, cable TV etc and people will not buy the paper for such news.

On the other hand, more exclusive stories and analysis pieces geared towards an Australian market could possibly give media companies like Fairfax a future. Examples like the success of The Economist are encouraging.

But this might also be a simple case of the demise of the daily broadsheet as a source of general news, local, state, national and international. Who knows - the market might become much more fractured, and people will choose to get information from a wider variety of sources. eg. their mobile phone for breaking news, their e-paper or iphone/PDA for longer stories, their computer at work for photos, multimedia and other feature stories, and the news in the evening on telly for a round-up of the day's news. Once a week, they'll read The Guardian Weekly, National Geographic Magazine or The Economist for a in-depth feature.

As it is, a majority of my peers (in the 18-30 age category) do not buy newspapers. They do read news websites that have articles/images/multimedia for free. They listen to commercial radio and television news, and sometimes watch documentaries on SBS, ABC and on cable television channels like the Discovery network. And some still read the weekend newspapers that have more analysis and feature articles.

I don't deny that I will miss the daily broadsheet. To me, it's like books, having a physical product has a certain attraction. But I myself am more of a news consumer online, on cable news channels like BBC and CNN, and of radio podcasts and television current affairs programs. And I'm a very heavy consumer - most people out that don't care if a newspaper collapses or a journalist loses their job.

So if a media company like Fairfax, which also owns websites like rsvp.com.au, domain.com.au and trademe.co.nz, evolves to become an information company and not a newspaper or news driven company, don't be surprised.

The journalists' union Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance has set up a Fair Go, Fairfax website and a facebook group, which currently has more than 1000 members.

Articles about Fairfax's cuts:
Fairfax Media legal unit also gets chopped in job axings

Citizen McCarthy swings Fairfax axe

Fairfax newspaper production to be outsourced

Strike paper on Friday, August 29:


Video of Fairfax campaign:

Full text of Giles Coren's rant to Times subs

Absolutely hilarious and a must read, though not for the subs at that time I suppose ...

For all the poor subs getting axed out there. You matter!

Chaps,

I am mightily pissed off. I have addressed this to Owen, Amanda and Ben because I don't know who i am supposed to be pissed off with (i'm assuming owen, but i filed to amanda and ben so it's only fair), and also to Tony, who wasn't here - if he had been I'm guessing it wouldn't have happened.

I don't really like people tinkering with my copy for the sake of tinkering. I do not enjoy the suggestion that you have a better ear or eye for how I want my words to read than I do. Owen, we discussed your turning three of my long sentences into six short ones in a single piece, and how that wasn't going to happen anymore, so I'm really hoping it wasn't you that fucked up my review on saturday.

It was the final sentence. Final sentences are very, very important. A piece builds to them, they are the little jingle that the reader takes with him into the weekend.

I wrote: "I can't think of a nicer place to sit this spring over a glass of rosé and watch the boys and girls in the street outside smiling gaily to each other, and wondering where to go for a nosh."

It appeared as: "I can't think of a nicer place to sit this spring over a glass of rosé and watch the boys and girls in the street outside smiling gaily to each other, and wondering where to go for nosh."

There is no length issue. This is someone thinking "I'll just remove this indefinite article because Coren is an illiterate cunt and i know best".

Well, you fucking don't.
This was shit, shit sub-editing for three reasons.
1) 'Nosh', as I'm sure you fluent Yiddish speakers know, is a noun formed from a bastardisation of the German 'naschen'. It is a verb, and can be construed into two distinct nouns. One, 'nosh', means simply 'food'. You have decided that this is what i meant and removed the 'a'. I am insulted enough that you think you have a better ear for English than me. But a better ear for Yiddish? I doubt it. Because the other noun, 'nosh' means "a session of eating" - in this sense you might think of its dual valency as being similar to that of 'scoff'. you can go for a scoff. or you can buy some scoff. the sentence you left me with is shit, and is not what i meant. Why would you change a sentnece aso that it meant something i didn't mean? I don't know, but you risk doing it every time you change something. And the way you avoid this kind of fuck up is by not changing a word of my copy without asking me, okay? it's easy. Not. A. Word. Ever.

2) I will now explain why your error is even more shit than it looks. You see, i was making a joke. I do that sometimes. I have set up the street as "sexually-charged". I have described the shenanigans across the road at G.A.Y.. I have used the word 'gaily' as a gentle nudge. And "looking for a nosh" has a secondary meaning of looking for a blowjob. Not specifically gay, for this is soho, and there are plenty of girls there who take money for noshing boys. "looking for nosh" does not have that ambiguity. the joke is gone. I only wrote that sodding paragraph to make that joke. And you've fucking stripped it out like a pissed Irish plasterer restoring a renaissance fresco and thinking jesus looks shit with a bear so plastering over it. You might as well have removed the whole paragraph. I mean, fucking christ, don't you read the copy?

3) And worst of all. Dumbest, deafest, shittest of all, you have removed the unstressed 'a' so that the stress that should have fallen on "nosh" is lost, and my piece ends on an unstressed syllable. When you're winding up a piece of prose, metre is crucial. Can't you hear? Can't you hear that it is wrong? It's not fucking rocket science. It's fucking pre-GCSE scansion. I have written 350 restaurant reviews for The Times and i have never ended on an unstressed syllable. Fuck. fuck, fuck, fuck.

I am sorry if this looks petty (last time i mailed a Times sub about the change of a single word i got in all sorts of trouble) but i care deeply about my work and i hate to have it fucked up by shit subbing. I have been away, you've been subbing joe and hugo and maybe they just file and fuck off and think "hey ho, it's tomorrow's fish and chips" - well, not me. I woke up at three in the morning on sunday and fucking lay there, furious, for two hours. weird, maybe. but that's how it is.

It strips me of all confidence in writing for the magazine. No exaggeration. i've got a review to write this morning and i really don't feel like doing it, for fear that some nuance is going to be removed from the final line, the pay-off, and i'm going to have another weekend ruined for me.

I've been writing for The Times for 15 years and i have never asked this before - i have never asked it of anyone i have written for - but I must insist, from now on, that i am sent a proof of every review i do, in pdf format, so i can check it for fuck-ups. and i must be sent it in good time in case changes are needed. It is the only way i can carry on in the job.

And, just out of interest, I'd like whoever made that change to email me and tell me why. Tell me the exact reasoning which led you to remove that word from my copy.

Right,
Sorry to go on. Anger, real steaming fucking anger can make a man verbose.
All the best
Giles

'Things are happening at the speed of light'

An uncertain future? What's going to happen next? Is the uncertainty of not knowing if your industry, job, etc is gonna be around good cos it promotes inventiveness, or is it just waaaay too depressing? Like this bit at the end of the article:

Many said, though, that they were uncertain improved editorial content would ensure a bright future — especially since most organizations failed to anticipate the changes that have wracked newsrooms in recent years.

Only 5 percent of the editors surveyed said they were confident they could predict what the newsroom would look like in five years.

"I feel I'm being catapulted into another world, a world I don't really understand," Virginian-Pilot editor Dennis Finley told PEJ. "Things are happening at the speed of light."

Study: shrinking newsrooms hurting papers' quality

NEW YORK (AP) — The many and deepening cuts at newspapers across the country are starting to take a toll on their content, according to a study being released Monday.

The challenge newspapers must meet immediately is to find more revenue on the Internet, according to the Project for Excellence in Journalism's study, called "The Changing Newsroom: What is Being Gained and What is Being Lost in America's Daily Newspapers."

Newspaper managers need to "find a way to monetize the rapid growth of Web readership before newsroom staff cuts so weaken newspapers that their competitive advantage disappears."

Stories are shorter overall, the study found, and staff coverage tends to focus on local and community news.

"America's newspapers are narrowing their reach and their ambitions and becoming niche reads," the study said.

Even when foreign and national news makes it into the papers, it is being relegated to less prominent pages.

"To make the front page, it has to be a significant development or a story that we can see through Florida eyes," said Sharon Rosenhause, managing editor of the Fort Lauderdale-based South Florida Sun-Sentinel and a longtime newspaper executive.

The reasons for the newsroom cutbacks are well known: Newsprint costs have jumped, and advertising and circulation revenue have quickened their descent this year as advertisers follow readers online. Newspaper Web sites capture only a small fraction of the revenue lost as they sell fewer print ads, which fetch more money. MORE

... but Greenslade says don't lose hope

Memo to journalists: don't be depressed by falling paper profits, the future is ours

I have attended four newspaper conferences in the past couple of months - in Italy, Australia, Sweden and Serbia - all of which have been dominated, in varying degrees, by concern about the immediate future. Some owners, managers and editors have been in denial, arguing that things are better than they appear.

In their view, newsprint is here to stay, though all have grasped that it cannot stand alone. Most have signed up to multi-platform journalism, though they generally see online as complementary rather than a viable replacement.

Others have been more rational, claiming that newsprint is on its way out. For them, it is only a matter of time before the online alternative replaces paper altogether. But they, like their less radical colleagues, tend to view the problem through the prism of commerce.

What exercises almost everyone connected to the newspaper industry - and industry is the key word here - is the belief that websites cannot generate anything like the revenue enjoyed by media companies throughout the last century (more properly, the last 60 years). They are cast down by their inability to "monetise the net".

Why the worry? Profits, of course. Online news sites will never generate the kind of money that has made newspaper ownership so lucrative. Corporate owners in Britain and the US - along with their investors - have revelled in achieving 30% plus profit margins in the past and cannot conceive of lower returns. The investors, ruthless and logical, are looking elsewhere for higher dividends. The owners are left with companies facing declining revenue amid a technological revolution they do not want and cannot control.

Meanwhile, many journalists who have grown used to the idea that their work is inextricably linked to profitable enterprises are scratching their heads. They cannot conceive of a journalism that is gradually freeing itself from the yoke of commerce. Without business, without profits, who will pay their wages? Who will fund the foreign assignments? Who will provide the resources for long-form investigative journalism?

ADVERTISING SLUMP HITS REGIONALS

Such journalistic anxiety is understandable, but it is no good wailing about it. We have to envisage a future with an entirely new business model based on smaller returns that will fund a small, high quality staff, probably serving niche markets. (The days of mass media may well be over). But we have to admit to ourselves first that things will never be as they were in the last millennium. MORE

What do you think?