I still can’t see much difference at Domainfax today. It still looks like A Current Affair in drag using mostly syndicated material and the odd scab:
I feel for the journos but, let’s face it, the place lost most of its brains years ago and those that remain are efficiently blackmailed into boosterish rubbish to keep their jobs, with only very few exceptions.
The Australian sticks the boot in:
Fairfax chief executive Greg Hywood has insisted the planned 125 journalist job cuts will be the last stage of a major restructure that began five years ago.
Dozens of striking journalists from The Sydney Morning Herald yesterday protested in central Sydney as Mr Hywood spoke at the Macquarie Connections Conference at Sheraton on the Park.
The latest job cuts — which equate to one in four positions being slashed — have prompted an unprecedented seven-day walkout at the Herald and The Age in Melbourne. The papers are still being produced, mostly with syndicated news, and will be printed next week during the federal budget, one of the busiest times of the year for newspapers.
Mr Hywood said while Fairfax’s print publications remained profitable, the company had to prepare for the future.
“After this year, we will be spending $100 million a year on journalism; that’s a lot of money,” Mr Hywood told The Australian.
“But what we are doing is that we are making sure that our publications are profitable and by profitable that means sustainable. They are profitable now and they have to continue to be profitable. You have to look into the future … and look at revenue trends.
Meh. They’ll have to cut the print versions next and that’ll dramatically shrink revenues further. Headcount will not have to fall as much but it’ll still be cut to match the reset cost base. Once online only the business will morph into a Huffington Post model of throwaway opinion, celebrity blogs and gossip. Cheap, cheap, cheap. Here it is from Hywood’s speech yesterday:
And, let’s not forget that when the property bubble bursts, it’ll face an existential crisis that shreds everything in sight.
The firm simply does not care about journalism any longer. Why would it? The eyeballs generated by the mastheads are only a funnel for selling realty.
The real problem for the rest of us is that they are going to bleed the mastheads dry in support of property. If rich folks give a hoot about the political economy then they’ll have to start new titles.
Perhaps this is something that Atlassian twins could do, once they’re done buying the Fairfax mansion.
