APN News & Media in talks with Fairfax New Zealand over merger of NZME

Hywood is shameless. Here he is spruiking the sale of a chunk of Fairfax as an opportunity to invest in content and journalism. Meanwhile he has crushed through his own incompetence what were once strong and vital sources of news and journalism. It is impossible that he believes this crap, and certainly no one else can.

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@Hollowman, I can understand the personal anger directed at Hywood from the narrow vantage point of someone directly affected by or close to people affected by the compulsory redundancies yesterday. But the shareholders and board expect Hywood to steer the company towards profitabality. Not cutting costs in the legacy part of the business and investing in likely growth areas would be dereliction of his duty. Digital disruption has smashed the old models – look at The Guardian now planning for 250 job cuts, look at the New York Times now planning for (another) 70 job cuts. Are you going to slam the management of those companies for incompetence? Very sad for those affected, but the world of work has changed in the 21st century. To try and create a narrative that Fairfax Media editorial jobs are being lost because Hywood and Fairfax got their strategy wrong is really just not true. Fairfax Media jobs are being lost because advertisers are spending their money on Facebook and Google. Whatever remains of Fairfax Media in the future will be there thanks to Hywood and management. It could just as easily have all been gone by now.

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Tom: you perhaps miss the point. Hywood says the core of Fairfax business is editorial. On his watch it has collapsed. That much is already evident, without much analysis. Hywood says Fairfax has a future based on its editorial vales, yet those values have very plainly been tipped out. Hywood cites traffic numbers on digital sites as evidence of the “new” Fairfax when it has been bleeding obvious for years that traffic will not ever produce revenue and chasing traffic is why the SMH etc are full of rubbish.
The one thing that is totally clear is that Hywood has simply done what Roger Corbett’s consultants told him. He has exercised no judgment in process of protecting his bonus and is cynical in his pursuit of cash. As to The Guardian: they have finally realised that the triaffic strategy was dumb (Hywood still talks it up). As to the NYT: you clearly don’t know much about newspaers as everyone in the industry knows that the US papers and especially the NYT are grossly over-staffed (they could lose 70 from the lunch counter).

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@Hollowman Apart from the gratuitous insult, I appreciate that your argument is more substantial second time round – but I think you’ve been selective about hearing what Hywood has said. And narrow in your interpretation. Even after this latest round of cuts, Fairfax will still have a stable of some of the best journalists in Australia. Which is why people are paying for digital subscriptions – so its not just about scale. Still low revenue, but a lot more than the Guardian. Stan, the VOD project is also subscriber-based. I know the US media industry very well, btw. I’ll grant that after ferocious shedding, the NYT is still generously staffed – not however “grossly over-staffed” – but that’s not the case anywhere else. All this baying and howling at Hywood and Fairfax management is like dogs barking at the moon. No understanding of the earth turning on its axis.

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@tom: if you think that was an insult you’d better stay clear of newsrooms.
If you believe the Fairfax mastheads today are delivering a high value news product then you are not in touch with the market.
You ignore the basic point about traffic metrics and quality and revenue. You toss in subscriber revenue and compare it with The Guardian which does not charge. You seem to have no idea of the staffing of say the SMH relative to NYT practices. And you deploy gratuitous, clumsy mixed metaphor. Just as Hywood does.
People decry this incoherence in management because they see the wilful destruction and blatant disregard of the values. Faurfax was never perfect but it did attract a great many talented and responsible citizens.

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@hollowman this is fun! while we’re meditating on insults, try this: it’s obvious you once were a journalist of the more annoying type, you don’t allow level-headed analysis to get in the way of presumption, hectoring and hysterical ax-grinding. Fairfax was once over-staffed with journeymen of your ilk – middle-aged hacks who stood around in clumps all day nursing mutual hatreds, grumbling about management and resenting over-worked news editors who timidly asked them to occasionally turn in a piece of journalism. It hasn’t been said enough, or perhaps ever, that one of Fairfax’s biggest liabilities was the middle-aged spread of unproductive journalists in their middle years who had once perhaps won a Walkley Award judged by their mates and then noodled at their workstations with an over-inflated sense of entitlement for years thereafter – God forbid they would come to work every morning desperate to write the front-page splash. For years, these deadbeats were protected by the curious logic of the voluntary redundancy; talented journos took the cheques and bolted to eager employers, while the lifers and no-hopers stayed put in the self-preserving inner-knowledge they really weren’t re-employable. Yet around them toiled some of Australia’s finest reporters and editors, turning out brilliant investigative journalism, smart commissioning, outstanding visuals. And the third-rate brigade, the noisiest people on forums such as this, puffed themselves up in the self-delusional belief that because they shared a newsroom and a brand they were of the same standard. What I think is so sad is that in turning to compulsory redundancy, management is forced to play by the rules that makes a category redundant. An illustrator such as Rocco is a serious loss for the Sydney Morning Herald. Not so many others. Anyway, I hope you take this personally.

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Nice work Tom. Sadly you’ve yet to engage the point, which is that Fairfax has no strategy and its management has debased what were very strong brands.
Your avoidance of the facts and resort to abuse based on totally uninformed assumptions is consistent with the poor quality and decline of the SMH, The Age and AFR. I imagine you are part of the problem.

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