Fairfax weighs future of AAP news wire subscriptions
Fairfax Media is understood to be weighing up whether to continue its multiple subscriptions with the Australian Associated Press (AAP), while the news service itself has moved to reassure staff that any withdrawal by one of its biggest customers would not threaten its financial viability.
Sources at Fairfax have told Mumbrella that late last year the publisher, a major shareholder in the company, asked newsrooms across the country including The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald to do an audit of the amount of AAP copy used.
The internal review was understood to be part of an assessment to see whether Fairfax could operate without its multi-million dollar AAP news subscriptions, which cover a wide range of areas such as news, sports and photography. On Saturday The Weekend Australian published details of a Bain & Co report which recommended the company withdraw from the wire service in order to save millions of dollars.
Other recommendations in the report included moving to a 50 per cent contributor model and replacing senior journalists with less third-year cadets. A spokesman for Fairfax would not comment specificially on an internal review of AAP copy or the leaked Bain report saying only “the documents being referred to are well past their use by date“.
