Via The Guardian:
The editorial director, Sean Aylmer, outlined the numbers in an email to staff on Wednesday, a month after announcing the restructure which will see the mastheads narrow their coverage and rely more on contributors.
…“While we will be looking across all parts of the newsroom, at the end of the redundancy program we expect there will be significantly fewer editorial management, video, presentation and section writer roles.”
The media company also plans to use more contributors but to pay them per article rather than per word.
“We will move to a capped rate model for all contributors to the SMH, Age and AFR,” he said.
All third-party deals, presumably with wire services and agencies, will be reviewed and the use of casuals will be significantly reduced in a move which will shave $3m off the editorial budget.
…Part of the restructure includes a shift to the right of politics with the company stating it was pro market-based solutions, a statement rejected by staff as interfering in their independence.
…“Our pro-investor, pro-consumer view of business is central to our influence in the economic and business community,” the company said last month in a five-page document titled Metro Journalism – The way ahead.
Well, there it is in plain black and white. The end of “independent always” Fairfax as it goes ex-journalism and relies on rent-seekers to generate content.
At least it’s now out in the open. You can read the phrase “our pro-investor, pro-consumer view of business is central to our influence in the economic and business community” to mean just one thing: all property, all of the time.
Please subscribe to MB immediately lest the nation be swept away in a deluge of lies.
