The ABC is not siphoning audiences from Fairfax
Fairfax’s CEO Greg Hywood recently hit out at the ABC for undermining commercial media companies, but in this crossposting from The Conversation, Axel Bruns argues that this misunderstands the new digital ecosystem.
Fairfax CEO Greg Hywood has been busy. His company’s announcement on 3 May 2017 that Fairfax would sack 125 of its newsroom staff led to Sydney Morning Herald and The Age journalists going on strike, at the worst possible time in the Australian political calendar. 
Meanwhile, media reports highlighted Hywood’s annual pay of over A$7 million – which at a median reported salary for journalists of just over A$51,000 would comfortably pay for the most of the staff laid off in Hywood’s announcement.
This is not to say that Hywood does not deserve a CEO-level salary, of course. But in light of the criticism of the job losses at Fairfax, his defence of executive pay levels was tin-eared, to say the least:
We pride ourselves on providing above-market salaries… We need good people to work at this business. You don’t fix the issues confronting the media business by doing the same thing again and again, and expecting a different result.
ROFL: Denial, not just a river in Egypt.
Everything competes with sleep
ABC is one of the last, credible, resources. The money worshippers and greed salutes hate the ABC. These same people would love for nothing less than the population to conform and obey their advertiser’s messages. Fairfax Digital, when it launched was looking great, it hired loads of smart talent, who in turn went and joined far more pioneering companies, such as, ahem, Google… Is there one single computer scientist on the Fairfax Board? No? Well, there you go. An old school institution. To be fair, not as evil as News Corp…
I count myself as a ‘serious news follower’ and read both The Age and the ABC news each day, but if I ever ditch my Fairfax subscription and just rely on the ABC site it will be because the cuts to Fairfax have finally reduced the quality to such a level that it’s no longer worth reading. If Fairfax management are worried about the ABC it should be because the national broadcaster provides a standard of quality journalism that the commercial operations can be measured against.
There is nothing wrong with The Guardian. NYTimes – Aus Edition. Even The Conversation can be worthy of a read 🙂
Do steer clear of the Murdoch clap trap though: not even worth wrapping fish and chips in that sensationalist nonsense…
On a similar tip it is worth noting that The Guardian allows links to Fairfax through content ads on their site but Fairfax does not allow links to The Guardian.
Fairfax is the author of its own demise. Playing to a receding, contracting audience of political-cultural elitists within a shrinking bubble, is not a strategy for success.
However criticising the ABC for using money paid in taxes by its competitors, to compete against them, is a valid criticism.
It arguably falls under s.51 (xxxi) of the constitution whereby the Commonwealth must compensate on “just terms” where the Commonwealth (the ABC) has infringed on the property rights of other media. Taking clicks & eyeballs away from commercial media, is acquiring their property. The ABC should stop, or cough up the compensation.
Total nonsense. It is pretty clear your comment is based entirely on your political leanings and not reality.
You’re right!
As it happens I have a security guard firm. The police have taking my business for years. Not to mention the armed forces. I’ll start filling out the compensation form tomorrow.
Love it Faux.
It seems to me, that blaming others for ones own woes is unhelpful, even when its accurate. No point focussing on the things you can’t control….like the fact the ABC exists and the public loves it.
Hywood’ whinge is idiotic. Fact is that the gorilla with traffic is google plus Facebook. Everyone else is a chimp. This is why newspapers are giving up on traffic based commercial models. But not Hywood, who has accelerated the Fairfax demise with a reactive cost cutting regime that lacks any strategy. It’s not the ABC that is damaging Fairfax.