‘People like to pick on Fairfax’: News boss insists newsroom is on board with changes
Aylmer: “We still have a stable of great writers”
Fairfax news and business media chief, Sean Aylmer, has defended the latest round of job cuts and suggested newsroom staff fully understand that change is unavoidable.
However unpalatable it is to make people redundant “we would not have a business” if hard decisions had not made now and in the past, he said.
Speaking to Mumbrella on the sidelines of the International News Media Association (INMA) world congress in London, Aylmer also vehemently rejected suggestions the redundancy of 120 staff – some of them senior journalists – made a mockery of Fairfax’s continued vocal commitment to quality journalism.
As a former Fairfax reader, I pick on it for being crap.
The amount of interesting, readable content has plummeted, replaced by click-bait and advertorials. It’s a chore trying to find the former in the growing mass of latter.
I finally gave up when I noticed I’d been landing on the front page and just staring blankly, to worried to click on anything for fear of it being conned by another piece of garbage. So I stopped landing on the front page.
How could they let cartoonist Rod Clement go?
Unbelievable..
Well said Jen. Fairfax execs keep talking about print or digital as if that’s the issue while the readers see a rapid decline in news content of any worth, a rising tide of click bait and promos for real estate in the editorial and a constant queue of people at the exits.
The evidence now explicit from serious publishers like the NYT and so on is that they must focus on what they do best to the EXCLUSION of the flotsam that is everywhere in the digital world.
If you look at what Aylmer says here and the backward-looking mouthings of Hywood you can see clearly that there is no strategy for the news value and an explicit expectation that to decline is to “survive”. (By which we must conclude that the “survival” issue here is exec salaries!)
On this evidence, which is now blatant, the owners should simply punt everyone whose name gets into the annual report.
People pick on Fairfax because it’s the quintessential example of how not to run a news site in the 21st century. Its failures are entirely due to its inability to understand consumer behaviour and trends and adapt its business model. Dumping its only real assets – quality journalists – is a sure sign that things aren’t going to get better.
Jen, the Sydney Morning Herald has the largest cross-platform audience out of any newspaper in Australia, by a long way. So, clearly people are still clicking on it. However, if you want to avoid clickbait and stupid ‘curiosity gap’ headlines, I’d suggest taking out a full subscription that includes delivery of the daily print papers. The papers are still filled with quality journalism and regular investigations. Subscribing is a fraction of the cost of buying the daily paper in a newsagent, and by doing so you are also supporting the journalists.
100% agree, Jen.
The SMH’s problem is the crappy quality of the content. Mostly click-bait, advertorial or something printed in the NYT, Washington Post or similar 1, 2, 3, 5, 10 days ago. Politically it seems to have shifted from an interesting, centre left paper, to a weird ‘conservative Green’ – ‘soft-Liberal’ hybrid.
A sharp competitor would wipe the Herald out?
You’re missing the point. Increasingly people don’t want or need a hard-copy newspaper. The idea that the only way to skip the crap click-bait etc is to buy the hardcopy is hardly a strategy for sustainable growth. I want a digital/online newspaper, minus the stupid headlines and advertorials. Happy to pay for this.
@Facts: the spin also makes people really angry. It is both cynical and arrogant to tell your once intelligent readership that this is quality. Go sell some used Ladas in Lapland.
Tom Standage of The Economist says: “what we do, what our mission is, does not depend on the medium with which you deliver it. And I know everyone says that, but in our case it really is true, because what we actually sell is what I like to call the feeling of being informed when you get to the very end”
If you want people to pay for something you need to give them something worth paying for. No-one is getting that from Fairfax any more.
Every point Aylmer makes is correct. Fairfax would be in a terrible position today if it hadn’t made the tough decisions. And it still has a lot of journalists, many of them outstanding. This constant harping on about the collapse of quality is an old, boring theme. For heaven’s sake, there is an awful lot of content flowing through the digital platforms every day – a lot of it appeals to diversionary tastes (nothing wrong with that) and there is a lot of serious reporting at the same time, all the time. I will bet that the same people who grump on about the SMH going downmarket and want it to remain so narrowly focused that it would die even quicker, those same people probably spend hours every week idling through their social media feeds looking at goofy videos. Facebook and Google are siphoning off traditional media’s audience and advertising – you bloody well can’t expect the SMH to remain suspended in the aspic of some golden past state that probably didn’t exist exactly as remembered. Anyway, the fact that Fairfax publications have a healthy digital subscription base and more readers than ever before tells you more about the company’s strategy than the carping nannas who claim there is no quality left. BTW, the London Telegraph has just announced another round of editorial cuts. Fairfax is not unique among quality publishers in having to reduce its workforce.
“The Sydney Morning Herald has the largest cross-platform audience out of any newspaper in Australia…”
Trust those metrics as much as I trust the real estate coverage.
“Independent Always,” strikes me as an outrageously ironic attempt at branding.
Did you say Aylmer is speaking on the sidelines from a conference in London? After he just harpooned 120 staff? And he reckons all is good and we just pick on Fairfax? And management over there are all top blokes and just a bit misunderstood? Someone call his mum (and the NSA). His body has been assumed by an alien life form.
@Jen those metrics would come from EMMA and Nielsen’s Digital Ratings Monthly. What’s not to trust?
While I agree that digital platforms have made it tough for everyone in print media and things at Fairfax couldn’t stay the same, part of the reason the company is in such a parlous state is because of bad management decisions made as much as 15 years ago.
There are still household names who work there, but the bulk of the work is done by fewer and fewer people, and the quality has been affected for years. I used to make contact and let them know about stupid grammatical or spelling mistakes on the website (it’s easy to change), but I’ve given up. There are too many, too often, and no one has the time.
It may be as much as eight years ago that someone used “curb” instead of “kerb” in a story that went to print… and no one noticed. Not the journo, the immediate editor, the subeditor or the check sub. Which speaks volumes to me. No offence to Sean Aylmer et al about the “quality” assertion, but they’re kidding themselves.
@tom: at what stage did the SMH compete with the Tele? Never. The audiences are totally different. So why is it vaguely relevant what enormous volumes of traffic come to the site? The question is about the product that people used to value as a reliable source of news.
Equally the volume of content is irrelevant. Especially when it’s clickbait.
When you guys start talking quality people might listen. Right now you’re talking redundancies and you picked a good example. The Tekegraph in London is sacking its bosses.
To all those people saying Fairfax has no decent content anymore, I sympathise, honestly I do. But But I challenge you to take a look at what are the most clicked on stories (bottom of SMH website); I think you will find these news organisations publish these types of stories for a reason – because that’s what the vast majority is clicking on, and in that respect, the audience is telling the paper/s what it wants to read.
Compare it to shopping for clothes; if a store puts an item of clothing on display, and it sells really well, they are going to A) restock/keep stocking it and B) other shops will also start stocking it or something similar. They won’t say ‘no, you should be wearing this instead because it’s better for you’.
Frustrated: with your logic Fairfax will save money and increase traffic enormously if they simply publish porn.
@Reader you still don’t get it. The point that I was making is that there is an awful lot of good content in the Fairfax titles, across all platforms, so stop harping on about there only being lighter material – my point wasn’t about the volume of content. By that I mean there is plenty of quality. And @usedtoworkthere you can nitpick about spelling mistakes being worse now than ever, but even back in the glory days of print, a story went from reporter to news editor to chief sub to sub to check sub to proof sub to second edition proof sub and you would still find plenty of howlers in the morning edition. SMH never did and still does not compete in the same way as the Tele, if you mean by that being “tabloid” in a nasty, lurid, sensationalist way. I mean, really, and for heaven’s sake – the SMH has a good audience, is what I was saying and you make it sound like a sin. The London Telegraph, btw is getting rid of more than just one or two deputy editors, they just grabbed the headlines. I’d hardly call them bosses
Terribly sorry Tom. Clearly the editorial product of the fairfax titles is wonderful. It is the best it has ever been. I apologise. Clearly we are the problem.
We should all feel sorry for Aylmer and Maserati Hywood because they continue to draw huge salaries and they’ve “saved” Fairfax after dropping the hatchet on staff, but saved it for what? Spare me.
http://digiday.com/publishers/.....ake-scale/
@Reader when you say “we”, you are speaking only for yourself and a small group of narrowly-focused critics. The wider audience has a different response.
Tom: quite right Great Sparrow.
A shame the Fairfax executive could not even get his facts right about his own business. Drive has partnered with 112 who own The Motor Report – a nothing website that does not even appear in the ratings – not Carsales.