Fairfax to close Sydney and Melbourne magazine inserts with another 45 journalist redundancies
Fairfax Media is to close its monthly glossy newspaper-inserted titles the(sydney)magazine and the(melbourne)magazine and its quarterly title Financial Review Capital as part of further cuts which will see another 25 editorial staff let go from the business unit and 20 from the News and Life Media unit.
The news was broken to staff in an email from Fairfax Media’s MD of Australian publishing media Allen Williams this morning.
The company is aiming for all of the redundancies to be voluntary. It is consulting with journalists’ union the Media, Entertainment & Arts Alliance.
In the note, Williams said: “It’s no secret to anyone in the media business that magazines have been an increasingly challenged platform. The sydney/melbourne titles have been great magazines, but it makes commercial sense to make these changes.”
The November editions of the Sydney and Melbourne titles will be the last. While Financial Review capital will be retained as a brand once a quarter within the newspaper.
The closures and redundancies come just over a year after the publisher revealed the Fairfax of the Future plan which saw hundreds of staff laid off and the closure of printing presses.
The Sydney and Melbourne magazines were originally launched as a means of attracting luxury brands into the portfolio that were otherwise sceptical about newspaper advertising.
While the closure of the titles sees Fairfax pull back from the newspaper-inserted magazine sector, it will continue with major titles such as Saturday’s Good Weekend magazine and Financial Review Magazine. The memo from Williams said that Fairfax “remain committed” to inserted magazines. He also signalled a digital launch in the luxury sector.
The redundancies in the Business Media unit comes after the decision to share more business content across the Australian Financial Review, and the business desks of The Age and the SMH. Yesterday a story by AFR columnist Joe Aston made the front page of both The Fin and the SMH.
The memo:
To all News, Life and Business staff:
As you know, there is a lot of work being done to transform the Australian Publishing Media (APM) division. I want to thank you all for your exceptional work and commitment over recent months. Your professionalism and dedication is greatly appreciated.
The current revenue environment remains challenging. While we are satisfied with the actions we are taking to address these challenges, we must also find cost reductions across our business. And amongst other things, this will involve more changes in staffing levels in the News, Life and Business publishing units.
Business Media
Over the past couple of months, we have consulted extensively with Business Media staff about the integration of Business Day. The new structure will produce new efficiencies and remove duplication. We also plan to change Financial Review Capital from a quarterly magazine to a run-of-book quarterly newspaper section. As a result, we are proposing a reduction in Business Media staff of approximately 25 employees through a redundancy program.
News and Life Media
As you know, we have been reviewing our product mix in APM over the past four months. The results of the initial phase of the review have led to the clear decision to close two monthly insert magazines, the(sydney)magazine and the(melbourne)magazine, finishing with the November 2013 issues.
It’s no secret to anyone in the media business that magazines have been an increasingly challenged platform. The sydney/melbourne titles have been great magazines, but it makes commercial sense to make these changes.
Closing the(sydney)magazine and the(melbourne)magazine will impact approximately 10 employees in the News publishing unit. We will explore redeployment opportunities for affected individuals. But the current revenue challenges we face requires us to pursue further cost reduction. As a result, we propose redundancies of approximately 20 employees across News Media and Life Media.
We remain committed to our other newspaper-inserted magazines and have already begun exploring new digital opportunities in the luxury category.
Consultation
Garry Linnell, Sean Aylmer, Melina Cruickshank and myself will be consulting with you, including holding staff Question and Answer sessions today.
We have already been in contact with the MEAA about today’s announcement and will continue to consult with them.
There will be further information sessions and discussions ahead of making any final decisions. We will take your feedback into account.
We anticipate being in a position to communicate our decision about next steps by 14 October 2013.
We understand that this time may be unsettling. I would like to remind everyone that Fairfax staff and their immediate family can access an Employee Assistance Program for confidential support and advice at no cost to them.
Regards,
Allen Williams
Managing Director – Australian Publishing Media
Fairfax Media
Tim Burrowes founded Mumbrella in 2008. He worked on Mumbrella until 2021. At various points he was editor, content director and editor-at-large.
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……….and we all look forward to the subscription costs falling accordingly.
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That’s sad. They were good magazines.
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Overdue. The Sydney and Melbourne magazines were wank-fests which were NOT about Sydney or Melbourne but rather the smallest of suburbs boasting the richest of cliques. They were not a patch on many overseas ‘city’-branded magazines.
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Yes. Overdue. Fairfax is leading the charge in digital space now. News struggling to keep up. Lets all hope they keep the focus.
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Digital all the way now for Fairfax. They are doing good things to shape a new business. Lets just hope the journalism continues to shine through.
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@jabba ‘ Lets just hope the journalism continues to shine through.’
Really? Surely not? Switch to The Guardian for quality journalism. Farifax and news are just poor quality
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A terrific publishing business being let down by sales
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Stay classy Jack (comment number 3) … people are losing their jobs and you choose to gloat about it. Lovely industry we work in isn’t it?
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Shame. Some of the photography in it was excellent. Did it close because of ad dollars or did it close because (supposedly) no one buys print editions of newspapers anymore (and hence never saw the thing)?
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Jabba and Ominous, Sadly all Fairfax is doing is leading the charge down the gurgler, their digital business cannot support their rich journalistic tradition and without that they don’t have a point of difference, matter of fact they don’t have much at all…
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I can’t understand the recent decision to yet again up the cover price of the Age & SMH. Unless they think it will get more people to sign up for a cheaper subscription and digital bundle. Trouble is they don’t appear to be heavily advertising the savings benefits that can be made as a subscriber, which are pretty significant. Meanwhile News Corp continues to advertise like there’s no tomorrow
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Ominous Jabba…
Honesty in astroturfing.
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Why do so many people use ‘myself’ when they mean ‘me’?
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@Paul (comment #8) – dude, how on earth is my comment ‘gloating’? It’s not as if I am rubbing my hands together with glee at this. All I said, and what I’ll repeat, is that in my opinion the mags were indulgent wank-fests which did not live up to the promise of the masthead in being about Sydney or Melbourne, and that there are plenty of city-branded magazines overseas which do a better job – and come to think of it, would be a better business model than these large glossies.
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another victim of media agencies walking away from magazines to put money into formats they have a stronger interest in.
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I’ll miss the regular work more than anything: http://peterbarrett.com.au/201.....nd-thanks/
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@Jack (comment) 14. Maybe ‘gloating’ is the wrong word. Try “dancing on a grave’ instead. People working on these mags read this website … your disdain is salt into the wounds. You’d expect a bit of solidarity on a media industry website, rather than “about time they closed it” superiority.
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This is a guess, but for print mags to survive they need to be able to source cheap content from likeminded/similar overseas editions. Something that a Syd/Melb specific publication was never able to do. The SMH has been taking overseas content for ages, as has the Good Weekend. As an aside, my wife bought home the debut edition of Elle magazine this week. The thing weighed an absolute tonne, so it’s not all doom and gloom for the magazine industry as some of the comments here suggest…
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Sydney magazine was a great title. I see absolutely no reason to ever buy a newspaper again. Just close down the whole print side and be done with offering a shit shrinking product.
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Maybe the mags could have survived but why flog a dead horse. We know the whole management is focused on digital now. They’ve done a good job monetizing their digital lifestyle content, more so than other tradional print media. Telstra axed 1100 jobs last week and it barely got a mention. Media is in such a frenzy over Fairfax.
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But the Telstra jobs weren’t journos! The power engine of Australian democracy. Outrageous when you look at Hywoods salary.
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Fairfax doesn’t own presses to print glossy mags, most are printed at Hannanprint and the cost totally eats into any profit from ad dollars. I’m surprised they are not shutting down more magazines; as a recent senior ex-employee I know of only two NIMs in the Fairfax stable that are profitable (GW + The Fin Mag).
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Indeed Lotty. The Telstra jobs were in back office positions like IT. It is obviously distressing for them, but plenty of other places to work where their skills are needed. Journos …. not so much.
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@Paul (comment 17): point taken, but I’m not dancing on any grave and I don’t do the “Solidarity forever, brothers!” schtick. I’m simply a professional who’s worked in the media for 30 years – I’ve seen and been through all sorts of changes, relaunches, downsizing, closures and so on – times change, and products need to change with them. That’s the story today. It doesn’t mean I don’t feel for those put out of work by today’s announcement, but nor does mean that my opinion about these titles changes one iota.
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There is a culture in the Australian print media that when a title closes it is because of bad management or online readers or media agencies taking their money elsewhere or some other external factor; never does anyone consider that a title failed because it was a bad title with bad journalism and bad design and simply was bad.
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@ Man who knows things. If that were the case then wouldn’t it have folded years ago? I subscribe to the SMH and I enjoyed reading the magazine. Sure, it was a bit pretty and snooty but it was well written, contemporary design and had great photos. By the end there it was getting pretty thin, so I’d argue it simply wasn’t bringing in the ad dollars to sustain it. The print run was probably 200K plus the extra delivery to newsagents etc would’ve cost Fairfax big dollars. Being free it was clearly an ad driven model and if the ad bucks aren’t there then there goes your business model. So I think you’re wrong to say it went under because it was “simply bad”.
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@Bruce: I didn’t specifically say (sydney)/(melbourne) were bad – I have never read them – just that there is a culture within the media of blaming everything except the content for failures. I would posit that the SMH, which is do read, is suffering because its standards have declined so rapidly. News has always been terrible. Compare that to Mumbrella, which I think is excellent, and is apparently going well, judging by the sniping in the traditional media.
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@Man
‘Judging by the sniping in the traditional media.’
Sites like Mumbrella lift the lid on corporate media shenanigans, something its executives hate. Pre-interwebs, such things didn’t happen outside of employees grumbles down the pub.
Fairfax management’s continuing sense of entitlement is unbelievable, matched by a limited understanding of the new digital environment in which they must now operate to survive.
The day this poster saw a senior executive (still employed) reading paper printouts of web-pages was the day I realised the company was well and truly effed.
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Ex ex reader. You need to go get a chill pill. You sound like a person they ditched. Try TRY to get over it. Move on. You can do it, honestly. Remove the obsession and smile.
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@Lotty
Good advice – just watching that (once great) company mismanaged into its current state was hurty. And still is.
Guess I’ll go look at kitten pics on /aww.
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I have a mate who was a senior Fairfax editor. One day he told a young reporter fresh from uni that her copy had big holes in it, that names had two or more different spellings in the same paragraph and it needed more work.
She trotted off to HR and reported him for sexism and bullying.
He was “counselled” — and never again did what used to be called editing. Why risk it when management didn’t want to understand how the news business works.
I just spoke to him on the phone. His reaction to the news: “Fairfax is going down because it lost the plot long ago.”
Can’t disagree with him.
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These mags were never good business. It is amazing that it took so long to kill them. The continuing weakening the core editorial product is what killed Fairfax. The board and management are clueless, with the profitless digital “strategy” a plain case of cosmetics on the porker.
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When the Sydney magazine started it was excellent. But it turned into just another women’s magazine and lost its reason to exist.
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inky relic: I call BS on your anecdote. It has more holes in it than the supposed young reporter’s copy you talk about.
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I heard they were shut down due to lack of ad dollars/high overheads for a glossy publication.
If people don’t want Fairfax to lose journos perhaps they should stop trying to cheat the paywall or go out and actually buy the paper.
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@ Inky relic…. boy do I relate to that. I just managed a team of 8 “Gen Ys” and I couldn’t have met a more self-absorbed, whingey bunch of talentless slackers with such a sense of entitlement. Once we had to work back and one told me it wasn’t in her contract and she was leaving at 5pm and there was nothing I could do about it. I gave a particular bad performer a 3% annual pay review and she accused me of harassment. And another bunch went out for a Friday long lunch and never came back (when we were on deadline). I gave them a bollocking and they all started crying and complained about me to the MD. I gave up in the end and took a redundancy….
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Hmmmm.
If Fairfax are doing such a great job in digital, why are ads on my career now free? So I can now pay $150 to “upgrade” to the print product. Yay!
That’s a succesful digital first strategy for ya.
In what area does Fairfax show digital leadership?
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I wholeheartedly agree with Alex who had a jab @ Jabba further up in the comments.
Fairfax’s journalism has started flowing out at north head ever since it lead 80-odd of its finest go… Now it feels like they’ve given important gigs like urban affairs to work experience students.
“Can you make me a coffee, check the mail and write a 1,200 word read piece on (ex) Fatty O’Barrel’s under the radar planning changes please.”
There’s still a handful of decent journos there with adequate experience, but only a handful!
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Ooops… should’ve said:
Fairfax’s journalism has started flowing out at north head ever since it let 80-odd of its finest go… Now it feels like they’ve given important gigs like urban affairs to work experience students.
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Dont worry boys and girls tony and his crew will fix it .we will be in recession in 12months and you will be all out of ajob
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Too many instant media formats and not enough time.
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Run it by me again…
for HOW LONG did dinasours rule the Earth?
and HOW LONG have newspapers been… well, whatever they’ve been?
My Grandfather was a proud, cool dude. He spent his entire life workiing on the most high-tech, cutting-edge, modern thing imaginable: the railway.
Ah, yes. The Age of Steam. Almost as cool as the IT Wizards of today.
Way to go Fairfax, giving the customers true value.
Customer. I’ll explain that some other sixty seconds, now sing!
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