Fairfax Media and News Corp fire back at The Saturday Paper

Fairfax has certainly slipped in quality in recent years, but it’s still infinately better than News Corp, whose rags are now little more than daily propaganda statements. It’s some years since Murdoch produced newspapers.

They’re absolutely right, it’s not the quality of the journalism (entirely).

Maybe it’s the internet, who knows?

Maybe people like to get news as it happens rather than reading about what happened yesterday?

I could be wrong…

I do love that News Corp is questioning circulation figures based on copies at full prices….

Waving Walkley Award numbers around means nothing. I once got into the school choir not because I could sing, but I didn’t sound as bad as the rest of the students.

Today you read about a house fire and it’s full of emotive words: “tragic” “heart-breaking” “raging fire sweeps through house” etc… <– prose.

I read an article about a house fire published in the 1920's: "A house on X street burned down at 2am. No one was injured." <– news. Again with the school years; I was taught to leave all emotion and opinion out of news articles. I find that to be the most annoying thing about reading news today.

First par: …have rejected claims that a fall in editorial quality at their newspapers had accounted for their declining circulations….
They can “reject” all they like – or face reality…. which is failing editorial quality accounts for failing circulations. Actually, why don’t they all go have a cup of tea with the Board of Myer… they’ll be in good company there..

So if everything is so wonderful in NewspaperLand – why the incessant overt and covert attacks on the ABC – the only genuine “news” source in Oz?

Oh Chris, how many of your weekend AND weekday circs are not full price?

Wasn’t that long ago that business foyers across the land had free copies of the Australian going begging to bump up diminished circulation. Glass houses and all that Mr Mitchell.

Infinitely

Mitchell is hilarious. And I thought Linnell was now a disc jockey? When these guys escape the echo chambers they will discover that their opinions are the core problem.
Hopefully when Fairfax and News are gone, which must be sooner rather than later, people might start news media that treats the reader with some respect.

The Oz going after Robert Manne – again. In other news water is wet. For a boutique opinion maker the Oz certainly seem to spend a lot of time on him.

Undoubtedly the wrecked the business model (I used “wrecked” as it is slightly less cliché than “broken”) is the main reason for falling circulation. However the quality argument does stand up I think. Pointing to winning Walkley awards as evidence of your quality is kind of like me boasting I’m the best 100 hundred metres sprinter in my house. I don’t read enough Hartcher to comment but in my opinion Kelly’s work has declined in quality over the last decade or so. Add to that while both stables have kept their “main” opinionista both of them have lost a heck of a lot of their stronger players in the journalistic culls of the last few years – but that’s the business model again.

Love how someone has thrown the ABC into this. The only thing worse than privatised propaganda is the tax payer funded model that is the ABC.

Can’t wait for this new paper to show them all up

Editor-in-chief of The Australian Chris Mitchell also fiercely rejected the remarks lambasting Schwartz Media for what he labelled its “mawkish left-wing pieties”.

Says it all really; last time I looked, 100% of the Australians wasn’t looking for lighty warmed over tea party rants. Probable a market for those that aren’t.

My local supermarket often attempts to give away The Advertiser at the checkout…and I rarely see anyone take one. Their right wing, front page editorials leading up to the election, right wing bias all other times, copy full of grammar and fact errors, and basically, printing yesterday’s news, are all reasons why I no longer subscribe to hard copy, and get my news from independent news sources I subscribe to on facebook. It’s more balanced, and live. And Rupert, you’ve screwed Australia enough…I’m not paying for your digital news, either.

Much as I love Fairfax, their editorial quality has dipped, if they cared to talk to anyone but themselves. Sunday Age has declined steeply in value past decade, as as SMH weekdays.

With the advent of the pay-wall, Fairfax has found new ways to annoy loyal customers.

On the one hand, there is considerable overlap between the print content of the Age, SMH, and Canberra Times.

On the other hand, they don’t have the wit to offer a single digital subscription to all three – you have to go to each silo separately. Who’s going to do that?

Just to top it all off, a direct print subscription with a Fairfax paper gets you free digital, but a newsagent subscription doesn’t. Thereby alienating every newsagent in south east Australia, clever, eh?

i think Morry is right, Fairfax is gone, ‘probably a takeover and breakup’, as he put it last year.

All the major news papers are trash. Barely 35 year old Journo’s giving their opinion of where China is going wrong, according to a well respected lecturer at some University , naturally source unnamed, and how badly it will affect Australia. A fortnight later without fail, another Fairfax column will have facts, figures and all sorts of rubbish claiming China in fact is doing quite well.

In 10 years time, people will be look back amazed that so many tress were cut down to create a product that people only read about 5% of then threw away after about 10 minutes.

They could have had internet newspapers in the 1970s you know, the technology was there. But instead they came up with “Opinion” and “NewsBingo”.