A modern tragedy: Nine Fairfax merger a disaster for quality media
On this historic day for Australia’s media industry, the University of Melbourne’s Denis Muller describes a tale of loss in this crossposting from The Conversation.
All deaths are sudden, even if long expected.
Appropriately enough, this is the opening sentence of a book called Journalism in a Culture of Grief.
And if ever there was a time of grief for journalism in Australia, it is today, with the announcement that Nine Entertainment is taking over Fairfax Media.
“Will the charter have any meaning when the newspapers are owned by a company whose chairman, Peter Costello, was treasurer in the Liberal-National Coalition government of former Prime Minister John Howard?”
Would this pinko be making this comment if Wayne Swan was the chairman of this company? How is this relevant to the overall picture?
It’s this sort of left wing garbage that most Australians are sick of and makes them not give a toss about who owns Fairfax and whether or not it will continue to espouse outdated and irrelevant propaganda.
Don’t you just love a cogent unbiased riposte based on the word “if”.
completely concur
Bleak and true.
It is not the death of quality journalism, it is the death of unpopular journalism. Here are the circulation figures 2017 for some of Australia’s major newspapers and their fall since 2002.
88634-SMH -61% 15298-Canberra Times -60% 83229-Age -58% 44635-AFR -50% 221641-Telegraph -45% 303140-Herald-Sun -45% 133774-West Australian -36% 94448-Australian -28%
Gerald Henderson often wrote how the Fairfax papers chose to sneer, preach and criticise what was their core readership. The result was that the four biggest declines were their four main mastheads whilst papers like the West Australian and the Australian have experienced relatively small drops.
I don’t accept the journalistic integrity argument. I am pretty sure the circulation would have fallen less if the SMH had simply replaced its daily click-bait real estate story (intended to support the float of Domain) with a more popular sports story or covered more on economics and international relations and less on identity politics issues, the situation at the paper would not be what it is.
If only Fairfax had someone with deep pockets willing to support its independence through the difficult times but they rejected those offers. If you don’t allow the wealthy and successful into management, the result is failure.
Agree
In 30 years of media relations dealing with pesky journalists, I and all my colleagues have noted a steeo decline in quality at The Age over the last few years. Like a really dumb undergraduate level of reporting. Laughable at how easy it is to spin an Age journalist. All the good people left ages ago
This was not the death of quality journalism.
…That happened a few decades ago.
“Fairfax has a charter of editorial independence, which all owners since 1990 have signed up to. Will Nine sign up to it?
The answers to these questions will not be known for some time.”
They already have signed it, so there goes that question.
The notion that the Sydney Morning Herald or The Age have been “quality media” has been laughable for some time. It once was true but that ship has long since sailed. The current Fairfax deserves to be absorbed by Nine and will be better for it.