Fairfax staff on strike until Monday, after company moves to sack 12.5% of news room
Fairfax journalists are set to strike until Monday after the publisher today planned job cuts which will see the equivalent of 120 full-time positions axed, with staff looking to walk off the job.
The strike, which would be equivalent of 12.5% of the newsroom, comes after a stop-work meeting at the Sydney Morning Herald voted 115 to 3 to strike against the action which is aimed at reducing costs across news and business in its Sydney and Melbourne newsrooms.
The move will likely see walk-outs at the SMH, The Age, The Canberra Times and associated online publications, although not all publications have yet voted to walk.
Tweet by Fairfax political editor Bevan Shields
I, for one, welcome the idea of Todd Sampson being stationed in the Fairfax newsroom the next 4 days. He will fill many column inches with tales of his solo adventures climbing Mount Everest.
Be bold, Todd Sampson, and go where no board member has gone before. Mush!
Hard to imagine why the journos would think Hywood has any focus on sustained editorial quality. It’s all in one number: his pay packet.
and what will the strike achieve…..absolutely nothing!!!!
Its all about profit and nothing to do with quality content.
So much is free digitally – their old model is teetering on the edge of the abyss………..unfortunately.
It has to change.
Correct Numbers. When will these cuts start to include Hywood and his old school clique? The slew of richly rewarded Managing Directors and Execs including recent high profile experiments have clearly proven to be incapable of building the promised new revenue streams and in most cases have done more harm than good. Meanwhile editorial are generating record audiences but continue to suffer the consequences of managements incompetence. This is not about transformation or trumpeting the last line of defence in Domain – look at that deal and the potential for generational nepotism. Enough of the same old shoddy spin. They shouldn’t be able to cut, cut, cut, cut, cut and all keep their jobs at the top. This strike should demand accountability for murky managements many failures. For too long they have been untouched or left to make poor decisions and mishandle important decisions. Commercial instinct and leadership is clearly lacking. It’s time the shareholders and staff took back control and demand the board wakes up to what is actually happening at Fairfax.
Correct numbers. When will these cuts include Hywood and his old school clique? The slew of richly rewarded “Managing Directors and Execs” have proven to be incapable of building the promised new revenue streams and in most cases have done more harm than good. Meanwhile editorial are generating record audiences but continue to suffer the consequences of managements incompetence. These strikes should demand accountability for murky managements many failures. For too long they have been untouched or left to make poor decisions and mishandle important decisions.
When you’ve got a company with new revenue generating streams either stagnating (digital subscriptions) or growing very slowly (digital advertising) compared to the pace that old revenues are falling, like print advertising (quickly) and print subscriptions (reasonably quickly), there’s really only a couple of answers – either find alternative revenue streams (they can’t) or shrink (they can).
Fairfax suffers from being used to being this huge organisation with a complex managerial structure funding all sorts of weird and (not) wonderful things, rather than being lean and mean and focused.
How are all “major new revenue Opportunities” that you talked up 3 years ago going for you, Mr Hywood? Content Marketing, events, marketing services for small businesses and data — guess the $$ from these aren’t exactly pouring in? The ONLY thing keeping Fairfax afloat is Domain. Take that away and there is no business.
https://staging.mumbrella.com.au/fairfax-boss-greg-hywood-going-get-content-marketing-business-188456
As of 3pm today Fairfax shares were up 4.16% to $0.80.
I can’t believe the market buys this ridiculous argument that Fairfax can cut it’s way out of the mess it’s in. The fact they continue to make these very big cuts – after already shedding many hundreds of staff — simply highlights that they are having no success at building strong new revenue streams to replace the $$ hemorrhaging out of print.
This quote from Greg Hywood re today’s events: “The initiatives we have proposed today are part of that adaptation and are necessary to sustain high quality journalism,”
Huh? How do you propose to sustain high quality journalism by sacking the people you need to produce it? Maybe you should apply the same logic to yourself: in an attempt to sustain high quality executive management at Fairfax, you could sack yourself and the rest of the executive team.
Would the last person at Fairfax please turn the lights out.
These sackings are likely a prelude to the axing of the weekday print edition, which has been predicted for some time.
pay for Fairfax greeny content
or…
get the same stuff for free from the ABC?
…and it’s unlike ABC, where trifling matters of ‘revenue’, ‘expenditure’ and ‘advertising’ don’t matter.
Less money = cutbacks. Seems the Fairfax staff have trouble understanding they’re not on equal footing with their ABC brethren.
As one who suffered the ignominy of being told there was ‘no clear or obvious role’ at Fairfax after 25 years service in a variety of editorial capacities – isn’t it apparent that those at the pointy end are simply on performance contracts and once the job is done – (and the plane is about to crash into the economic abyss) – they’ll simply don a chute and move on.
neoliberalism in action