Walkleys by the numbers – Fairfax’s worst two years in 23 years
Fairfax Media is on its worst run of Walkley Awards for excellence in journalism in 23 years while News Corp is on its best run since 2002. Mumbrella’s Tim Burrowes examines the data.
A while back, I was chatting to Hal Crawford, at the time editor-in-chief of NineMSN, about infograms and data journalism.
Rather memorably, he described interactive charts as “a great way to hide work”.
Having just spent more time than I intended crunching the data to create the graph below, I understand what he means.
Fairfax isn’t interested in funding journalism anymore. Instead it’s funding businesses like Allure Media to make a quick buck from advertorial written by people who have zero writing credentials.
And don’t get me started on it’s foray into Ecommerce with its homewares business it’s running inserts and full page ads for.
If you really cared about good journalism @not surprised, then you probably would have taken the time to get your facts straight before writing that comment. There are dozens of journalists at Allure media and some have broken the biggest stories of the year. Good on you for sitting behind that anonymous username though, taking I’ll-informed swipes at people that are actually having a go.
Fairfax isn’t interested in funding journalism anymore. Instead it’s funding businesses like Allure Media to make a quick buck from advertorial ‘written’ by people who have zero writing credentials.
And don’t get me started on the foray into Ecommerce with it’s gift store business.
Tim has a go at Fairfax again – what a surprise… and then promotes the company that brought us phone hacking…
Hi Bill,
Is there a different conclusion you would draw from the data?
Cheers,
Tim – Mumbrella
Bill: no one has a go at fairfax anymore. it is irrelevant.
The decline in the number of Walkleys won by Fairfax would be directly correlated to the decline in the quality of their journalism. Compare their homepage to some of the other major city mastheads around the world and the difference in quality is clear.
Tim,
Have you done any proper statistical correlation analysis on your data? With data since 1958 and only two consecutive years of bad performance correlating that to a decline feels like it might be off the mark ie. statistically ‘not meaningful’
There are a lot of variables here too which haven’t been factored in. Using only to two variables when lots of other variables are probably very important in a proper statistical determination probably isn’t the best approach if you’re trying to make a proper numbers and correlation argument.
Not withstanding, you’re probably right anyway.