In February this year, in support of professional journalism, I subscribes to the Washington Post, the New York Times and The Age. I wrote about it here and here.
In the wake of the news Wednesday that Fairfax is cutting editorial staff by 25%, I wonder if the subscription for The Age is a good move. I signed on as a subscriber to support quality independent journalism. I feel dudded. Fairfax titles already struggle because of limited journalist resources. The 25% cut will hit hard.
What is a trusted newspaper if it does not have journalists creating the product at the core of the business? As Mark Day wrote in The Australian yesterday:
Fairfax says it intends to use more contributors to fill its columns, but it intends to pay them less. It is a recipe for disaster, for if a publishing company cannot offer journalistic quality, it has nothing to offer. You can’t keep cutting the core of the business because, soon, there will be no business left.
I get it that Fairfax is in a tough situation. All print media is. My outsider view is that the company should have sought savings by cutting print editions. I expect they are losing money on print at least four days a week. I say that thinking of how thin the papers are some days. It is embarrassing what we charge for what feels like a pamphlet more so than a newspaper.
My thinking is: cut the weekday editions, produce beautiful bumper weekend editions and make money off of print and drive the migration to digital for weekday. Maybe would keep a Wednesday edition but certainly not Monday, Tuesday and Thursday. Make Friday a Friday / Saturday newspaper.
Cutting loss making print editions should mean the company is better resourced to create the journalism that is its differentiator. Or am I missing something here?
The other move I’d make is to deliver a digital experience that is best-practice. Currently from fair fax it is far from best practice. As a subscriber to the Washington Post I am enjoying a terrific online news experience that also provides access to quality journalism. The digital experience itself is key, especially on a pone as I suspect the majority of news site accesses are from a phone or mobile device.
The Washington Post tech and design team have produced a platform that makes me happy to pay for access, for the experience. Their investment in quality journalism reminds me my subscription is a good investment. This is what Fairfax needs to provide. Right now, their online experience gives me too much clickbait and a browsing experience that is not ideal for the iPhone.
Cutting editorial staff at Fairfax right now does not make sense to me, not this round. Hopefully, we see The Guardian, BuzzFeed, HuffPost in Australia and others fill the gap with quality journalism as Fairfax management appears disinterested their core differentiator.
Footnote: I am serious is asking the question. It is what I first thought when I heard the news of Fairfax cutting 25% of editorial staff.
The last financial year results made it clear that financial provisioning for future of mastheads was complete. Thy might be closed or disposed or whither and slowly disappear. Fairfax has no bottom line exposure to their future, their only concern now is public relations and to complete actual exit from sector. When domain is split out, probably this year, we will then see what form Fairfax’s exit will take and who subscriptions can be renewed with.
From the other side of the counter…we use to purchase SMH religiously on a Monday for the TV Guide (don’t judge) but once Robin Oliver and Doug Anderson moved on the guide became a shadow of its former self. We stopped purchasing it all together when in an exercise of cost cutting it stopped printing the regional scheduling.
The regional scheduling may be an insignificant detail but it came to symbolise a greater malaise and disregard for its regional readership.
It guttered its regional mast heads (some we understand were profitable) and the SMH as the defacto state paper increasingly concerned itself with the affairs of the inner city dwellers ignoring how state government decisions played across the rest of NSW.
At the end of the day as you rightly observed its about content or the lack there of.
Why should I pay for a digital subscription or buy a newspaper when they publish the same material unrestricted on other Fairfax sites, the content is often recycled from the Daily Mail and has its ‘virtue signalling’ masking as commentary.
Once upon a time, people would have paid for content with Fairfax but now we are not so sure. Too much damage done to the metro mastheads and their solution seems to cut original content.
Perhaps we are really are at the final Sliding Doors moment.
I don’t know what the answer is – and it seems that the executive team at Fairfax doesn’t either. I have been a very long term subscriber and used to enjoy reading the Sydney Morning Herald. I still get it, but it’s increasingly difficult to tolerate the quality of writing and reporting. Reducing capacity to produce your core business doesn’t make sense – which leads me to believe that Fairfax don’t see themselves remaining in the business of publishing journalism for too much longer. That is, something else will be their core business. Dreadful pity.
Both News Corp and Fairfax print media have produced strong results over many years , now they are challenged they appear to have no answers as to how to fix the decline .
Cutting the printing of unprofitable weekday papers makes sense . I would have thought maybe Friday Saturday Sunday and Monday papers could hand on , but the current management appear to be stuck in tradition and are unable to make the bold moves required to meet today’s market.
News Ltd continual roll out of coupon promotions indicates to me they are bereft of ideas .
If they had treated Newsagents better I might have some sympathy for them .