A plate of media redundancy schadenfreude, but whose fault is the bitter aftertaste?
While SBS is being criticised for a satirical piece on the News Corp redundancies, Nic Christensen argues the industry needs to come together and end the blinkered point scoring.
In my darker moments (usually right after the latest round of redundancies have been announced) it sometimes feels like that my job as a media writer is to chart the decline of journalism in this country.
Don’t get me wrong I take no pleasure from that, in part because I also know how it feels to lose your job – it’s just over three years ago since I cleared out my desk at News Corp’s HQ at Holt Street.
In the last 24 hours the journalism profession has mourned news of more redundancies.
At News Corp it’s understood at least 55 journalist roles are under the axe and there are also ongoing voluntary “sunset redundancies” at Fairfax Media’s The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age newsrooms.
It’s within this context that a piece on SBS’s satirical website The Backburner, “Fired News Corp journalists now free to pursue jobs as actual journalists”, hit a very raw nerve – particularly among News Corp employees past and present:
To be clear it wasn’t just News’ staff objecting to many of their peers at Fairfax, the ABC and elsewhere within the media also objected:
Indeed Mumbrella understands that some journalists within SBS’s newsroom also argued that the piece should be taken down and the piece was sent to senior management for a decision on whether it should be pulled, amid social media anger from rival outlets.
Call me biased (and yes, the News Corp microchip is still implanted although their management might argue it stopped working a while back) but for my money, although the satirical piece was actually focused on critiquing News’ style and subject matter, it should never have been run for a couple of reasons.
Firstly it wasn’t particularly funny. It was more like undergraduate humour rehashing a joke that had already been doing the rounds on Twitter and which is about as funny as the perennial joke about the company’s old name: “Is your news limited.” Geddit?
Although humour is of course in the eye of the beholder and the piece got some 350 Facebook likes and 69 shares – pretty good considering SBS Comedy’s page has less than 15,000 followers. It’s also probably not drawing a long bow to suggest they’d fall more on the left of the political spectrum, and are therefore more likely to dislike News/Rupert Murdoch.
The timing was also insensitive. Now I’m not arguing journalists should be a protected species – we dish it out and therefore we shouldn’t be immune from criticism or satire.
That said, News Corp began tapping people on the shoulder yesterday and unlike the ABC and Fairfax who are heavy on the consultation, Holt Street’s approach to these matters often sees people showing up at 8am unaware that they have been listed for redundancy and will be out the door before 12pm.
Mumbrella understands that there were a number of redundancies yesterday and at least three more people were being told this morning. That’s a month and a day before Christmas for those without a calendar.
The result is a culture where you have a couple of thousand people all looking over their shoulders for fear of being tapped – now I’m not justifying that approach to redundancies – but it’s within this context that last night’s howls of social media anger from News Corp staff should be understood.
As Crikey reports today: “(staff) were furious about the limited information staffers had been sent about what was going on, though it’s understood some editors have taken more time to explain the changes than others.
“For a company built on telling people what was going on, one unhappy tabloid journo mused, News Corp’s internal comms were ‘pretty fucking poor’.”
And so the reality is that you have a group of people who are going into Christmas don’t know how they’re going to pay the bills beyond a redundancy payout, which may not actually be all that big given these redundancies have increasingly hit young as well as older journalists.
Now satire naturally takes things to extremes, but it’s fair to say if a similar redundancy piece – which had elements of schadenfreude given SBS’ own struggles of late – had run about another outlet there would have been greater outrage.
And while News Corp will always have it’s critics I’d note it also has some of the best journalists in the country.
Unfortunately if anything, the concern about these News Corp jobs cuts is somewhat muted in part because of management and masthead editor’s willingness to put the knife into rivals.
For instance the tabloids, which this year likened Q&A host Tony Jones to a terrorist sympathiser running front page headlines with “the ABC of jihad”, “terror vision” and publishing ISIS waving an ABC flag:
Or The Australian’s relentless criticism of its rivals likes Fairfax, and calls to cut public broadcasting (what other publication would have the near unreadable rants of both Gerard Henderson’s Media Watch Dog AND Chris Kenny’s Media Watch Watch?) that often sees criticism of the ABC and SBS somewhat overblown:
Or the less than tactful way they themselves have handled news of journalism redundancies at Fairfax, the ABC and SBS. Which brings me to my biggest concern about the piece and that is it is a distraction from the real problem which is a broken business model for many commercial media. These are the latest in a long line of journalism redundancies, but they are certainly not the last.
Don’t believe me? Check out the media agency ad spend on newspapers in Australia in October 2012 it was $90.9m last month it was $58.9m and it’s a broadly similar story for magazines.
And while digital is growing for many media outlets it is nowhere near replacing the lost revenue, as the likes of Google and Facebook gobble up their share, and thus we see continuing cuts. (See Tim Burrowes’ analysis of Michael Wolff’s latest book for more detail on concerns around digital business models).
Just take a look at News’ rival Fairfax which has had success in building a digital subscriber base but which has again brought in the management consultants and is appears set to close bureaus in the Middle East and Washington, replaced by something which is being called internally a “super stringer” which is basically a salaried employee without the resourcing.
The company is also rumoured to be considering moving to a national newsroom model whereby the positions of Sydney Morning Herald editor and The Age editor would go and one position would have ultimate say over what is being run across Fairfax’s two most powerful mastheads. Not so local news.
This is something that a decade ago would have been unthinkable but today it appears on the cards as print revenues head in one direction – south.
As a media industry many mediums – not just print but also television and radio – face the threat of declining advertising revenues as their business models come under increasing threat from overseas operators – be they Buzzfeed, Netflix or Spotify.
Some may choose to take the cheap shot, to enjoy the jibe at the expense of the rival, but this ignores a reality that for all the talk of digital innovation, paywalls and new business models, our professional is fundamentally challenged and right now no-one has found a fully-funded solution.
And that’s ultimately something I can take no joy in.
Nic Christensen is deputy editor of Mumbrella. He is a former media writer for The Australian and reporter for the Daily Telegraph.
Author’s point is valid. Upset News Ltd staff should also consider how they have been working for a company with a long history of trying to get everyone at the ABC and SBS sacked. Two wrongs don’t make a right, but it might stop peeps getting too carried away in their anger.
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Sorry but satire is satire. You don’t get to pick & choose when & how it’s directed at you. The timing of this piece is perfect – it only makes sense if it’s published at the time of redundancies.
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Just wait. The goons forever calling for the ABC to be shut down, privatised and whatever other word they choose as a synonym for ‘destroyed’ will use this to heap further scorn on the ABC.
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It is worth remembering that working journos from News Corp are, in general, not those deciding the editorial line or writing the leaders.
While (rather pathetic) satire, the SBS piece was quite nasty and lacked the compassion we should feel for anyone losing their job (not just journos).
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Peter Ryan:
Well might the journalists at News cry: “I was just following orders” re their racist editorials.
As an excuse, it remains pretty poor. You accept the wages of working at News. You accept the reputation it gives you.
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Didn’t see everyone at News having a cry when Sharri Markson was crowing over ABC & SBS job cuts. They have made their own bed when it comes to this issue and the business model. I won’t be having sympathy pangs while watching them lie in it.
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It’s all good. Dad reckons they are just getting rid of the communists.
Uncle Rupert is apparently working on some sort of outsourcing deal with the IPA so they can manage the editorial in the Australian. The IPA think they will do a better job and Uncle Rupert agrees.
When I told mum that I found it ironic that with all their right wing rhetoric about how to run Australia they seem unable to run their own business she got mad at me.
And then sent me to bed with a lump of coal.
Which is far better than the lump of asbestos she gave me when I told her that she cant fight journalists with lawyers. Or the rest of the family with lawyers.
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Lovechild my dad said the market is the perfect mechanism for sorting all this stuff out. I said yeah but what about the people? He mumbled something about social justice and equality being an illusion or myth much like Santa Clause! Mum chimed in and said something like don’t delude yourself about the people there has to be structural adjustment and innovation, which she said News Corp has in spades. Looks like I’m on the way to losing all my illusions.
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I agree Ken.
We at News Ltd are Agile, Innovative and Disruptive.
This internet thing is just a fad. As the great Senator Alston once said to us true believers “Broadband is just so kids can play video games and download porn”.
The fad will go away when all the kids have to work 22 hours a day to pay the mortgage on their shoebox. Leaving them no time for this internet boondoggle.
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Actually I only came across this peice while reading the Guardian and it might be worthwhile to read the comments there if you work in the industry (I don’t). Although there might be some left wing bias there Journalists at News Corp might note that a large proportion of the general public probably have no sympathy whatsover. A redundancy is a luxury many can’t look forward to and they quite rightly place the blame on the right wing media and the politicians that media have helped elect. When those that throw stones and work with those who throw stones suddenly find themselves living in the free market glasshouse they advocated for the rest of us they get no sympathy.
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What is unfortunately missed when reporting on the demise of media is the hundreds of other (non-journo) jobs that are also being slashed left and right. It is terrible to see 55 journalists lose their jobs at News Ltd but I would like to also know how many others also lost their jobs this week. I know of a few at least that got the tap on the shoulder this week from both News and Fairfax.
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know people over the decades who have been really badly injured and “shamed” by Newscorpse.
Cry me a river – many of those journos have metaphorical “blood on their hands” – they’ve been taking the $$$$ to do the bidding of a very nasty organisation.
They can dish it out – but cry like sooks when a insy bit comes back their way.
schadenfreude. karma. yep.
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Lovechild Mum says you’re right about this internetty thing. She says the Telegraph think it’s a fad, and don’t even understand how to fit full-size pages of Nazis, Jihadists and the photos of 198 Soccer hoodlums all on their itsy-bitsy incy-winsy Webpage. She says no one wants to pay for that anyway.Dad said something about he didn’t want his meta ah meta data (the webpage thingy) revealing to Big Brother that he read the Telegraph. My bad disruptive parents Lovechild.
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A great irony in all this is that journos have discovered what its like when job security isnt what it was. Even so, the payouts under their ebas are massive compared to any other industry.
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