Fairfax to erect paywalls

Wow. From the SMH:

Fairfax Media will cut 1900 staff and erect paywalls on the websites of its two main metropolitan newspapers as it adjusts to shrinking advertising revenue.

Fairfax, publisher of this website, will also shift to compact-sized versions for those two newspapers, The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald, from the first quarter of 2013.

The job cuts will come over three years and generate annual savings of $235 million by 2015, Greg Hywood, Fairfax’s chief executive officer, told staff in an announcement this morning. Of that total, $215 million will be achieved by June 2014.

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About the author

David Llewellyn-Smith is Chief Strategist at the MB Fund and MB Super. David is the founding publisher and editor of MacroBusiness and was the founding publisher and global economy editor of The Diplomat, the Asia Pacific’s leading geo-politics and economics portal. He is also a former gold trader and economic commentator at The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, the ABC and Business Spectator. He is the co-author of The Great Crash of 2008 with Ross Garnaut and was the editor of the second Garnaut Climate Change Review.