Fairfax Media to cut 120 editorial jobs at The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age
Fairfax Media is set to cut the “equivalent of 120 full-time jobs” from news and business across newspapers The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age.
The cuts will be made through redundancies and cost-cutting measures.
Fairfax will cut equivalent of 120 FT jobs from news and business across the SMH and the Age via redundancies and cost cutting
— Sean Nicholls (@SeanNic) March 17, 2016
Staff were informed of the cuts this morning with an email from Sean Aylmer, Fairfax Media editorial director.
The email read: “We will shortly enter a consultation period with staff and the MEAA on a proposal to reduce costs across News and Business in the Sydney and Melbourne newsrooms by the equivalent of 120 full-time employees.
“We believe that we can do this through redundancies, tightening contributor budgets and reducing travel costs and expenses.”
Paul Murphy, CEO of the journalists union Media, Entertainment & Arts Alliance (MEAA), has described the cuts as a “body blow”.
MEAA CEO Paul Murphy: cuts are a “body blow”
“It’s the staff on the newsroom floor who have driven the transition to digital and through all the challenges continued to produce high quality independent journalism,” said.
“And this is the reward. Yet another savage cut to editorial. We will be fighting for every job.”
The news of the job cuts follows on from the company’s restructure of its editorial team which saw editor-in-chief of The Age Andrew Holden depart and a shift in power towards digital roles over print roles.
Last week Fairfax Media named Judith Whelan as editor of the Sydney Morning Herald.
Last month, a Fairfax Media announced plans to move production of its metro newspapers back to Pagemasters, a decision that could see 70 jobs axed.
Fairfax Media declined to comment.
Miranda Ward
The full email to staff from Sean Alymer editorial director of Fairfax:
Hi
We will shortly enter a consultation period with staff and the MEAA on a proposal to reduce costs across News and Business in the Sydney and Melbourne newsrooms by the equivalent of 120 full-time employees.
We believe that we can do this through redundancies, tightening contributor budgets and reducing travel costs and expenses.
Our decisions will be based on our understanding of our audience and the importance of our brands. Our reporting will continue to focus on investigations, state and federal politics, justice and breaking news, sport, entertainment and business.
While we are much more efficient in producing quality journalism, we still have a way to go.Change is a permanent part of our industry. It is a reflection of what we know about the ways our readers are consuming our stories. We must continue to evolve with them.
I will be holding staff meetings in Sydney today and in Melbourne tomorrow to discuss the proposal.
Thanks
Sean
Miranda Ward worked for Mumbrella from 2013 to 2017, eventually becoming deputy editor. Miranda joined Mumbrella in September 2013 from Sky News.
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Hi seems a bit of a casual way to start that email.
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“If print is dead, then I must be in hell” – Anonymous Fairfax employee
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This is really awful and dumb. What sort of incompetent management cuts off the people in the organisation who are the driving force behind the product?
The death of Fairfax is nigh.
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Always editorial which bears the brunt.
How long until The Age and SMH shut down the Monday-Friday print editions?
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If Sheehan isn’t top of the list, then they might as well just cease operating as the final dregs of their journalistic credibility will just end up mingling with New Corp’s in the sewer.
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So the subscription prices go up and the justification is ‘quality news’ meanwhile their gutting the area of the business responsible for quality.
How about less bloated management pay, a move to a single national masthead (time to stop hanging onto legacy concepts) and investment in making a better digital product – the news sites are a few generations behind international players.
I’m a subscriber to the SMH and all I’ve seen over the past few years is the wilful destruction of journalism . Any investment Fairfax makes is focussed on its ability to rake in ad revenue by developing content farm style operations like Allure Media for ad funded content. That’s not a actions of a business that values journalism.
Stop relying on advertising dollars and start creating a better product people want to subscribe to! Maybe that’s a board issue.. people from media and advertising don’t get the fundamentals of what makes a good product. They’re still in ad dollar land.
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Put a fork in Fairfax, it’s done. Incredibly sad too. At this rate I’m not too sure why we’re even training up journos at uni at the current pace, there’s no jobs as it is.
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I’m with you Subscriber. When are we going to see cuts to senior management pay and perks. They’ll have no-one left to manage at this rate. Vale Fairfax. Last one out of editorial please turn out the lights!
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So more Daily Life rubbish and less news and business.
Way to appeal to your demographic, Fairfax.
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Who is going to “keep the bastards” honest?
Soon there will be no investigative journalism
Just a world where PR and gossip is shared around the internet
Sad.
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Sad to hear that but it’s no wonder since SMH seem to be pulling content from the likes Mashable. E.g. the story about the Sydney lockout laws affecting Sydney nightlife first appeared on Mashable then a few hours later (almost word-for-word) appeared on the SMH. Previously SMH would’ve been behind breaking stories like this.
After that, I almost pulled my sub. Why should I pay for their “thinking” when someone else is doing it for them. There is no quality anymore in the online content which is sadly reflecting on their brand. They’d be better off to RIP SMH and re-brand into something else that reflects the click-bait and tabloidesque content.
I really don’t see how they can justify their tagline of “Independent news for independent thinkers” when it’s a mashed up online content portal.
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It’s actually the Financial Review, Brisbane Times and WA Today as well, not just SMH and The Age.
It’s the equivalent of 120 full-time roles – they won’t give us a dollar figure. They’ll start with contributor budgets and pagination, and then move to voluntary redundancy, then possibly forced redundancy.
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Thinking about the people who will lose their jobs. Hope they land on their feet. These announcements are becoming all too frequent.
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Dark times for journalism. You’d be a fool to think that this is a problem for Fairfax alone. The business model no longer works.
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It’s happening everywhere – radio newsrooms are also closing.
Journalists are multi-tasking and being paid less, while the hiring of cadets is almost a thing of the past.
Most newsrooms now rip and read and get their info from the web, because there is no money for reporters.
I’m really sad about today, we need reporters and resources for journalism, without that it’s be rip, read and scroll.
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Looking forward to the day when the MDs, CEOs and other types who have been in charge over the past 5-8 years hand in their resignations. That will save some money
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Tonight I’m going to pour one out for you, Fairfax. Or toast your pretty obvious pivot to internet drivel and flak-produced ‘content.’ I haven’t decided which.
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When the last journalist leaves Fairfax it will be interesting watching the company fill the papers and web sites with air.
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Are there 120 people left there to sack?
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The job cut always seem to be from editorial. Am I wrong? What about all the non-editorial sections?
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Management has been the Achilles heal of this company for years now.Extremely poorly run due to incompetence and lack of foresight.You cannot produce quality journalism on the smell of an oily rag.Their credibility is shot and they mose well shut down the company.
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As a recent victim of Fairfax redundancies, I wrongly thought staff cuts be finished for at least a few more months.
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Fairfax is a business like any other, and the business is doing poorly. Personnel can’t be shocked – surely some of these people are employable elsewhere? The media landscape continues to change, as should the business model…
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There never seems to be a word mentioned by SMH executives about cutting back on their own perks. As it is, the SMH is a dog’s breakfast nowadays, resembling a celebrity gossip site most of the time. A national tragedy created by some not so smart managers.
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Now its really not worth subscribing.
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That’s yet another death knell. Incredibly sad. The news about BRW recently really saddened me, as I began my journalism career with Fairfax. When Fairfax was a great place to work and provided excellent training for their young cadets. Today Fairfax is a shell of its former self.
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So, Fairfax remains committed to producing quality, independent journalism.? It’s a bit like removing the engine of a train and saying you’re still committed to transporting passengers on time
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Maybe if they get rid of enough staff Greg Hywood can get another bonus for achieving his cost reduction target and buy himself another Maserati.
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” Our decisions will be based on our understanding of our audience and the importance of our brands.” Sorry, Sean, but your decision to cut the equivalent of 120 full-time journalist positions shows you have no understanding of your readers nor the importance of your publications to them. If these positions go, so does my subscription. I realise this will do nothing to help those who are left after the carnage but to continue as a subscriber would be a tacit endorsement of your decision and a reward for your managerial ineptitude.
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MEAA chief executive Paul Murphy – Yeah right, good luck in trying to save the job
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Management have dragged the anchor for too long. Shareholders take priority & should never be asked to carry unpopularity & inefficiency.
What a great masthead this was. Everybody is entitled to ask how on earth could it have declined with such rapidity.
The answer has to be found in its content….the product of jounalists & Editors. Who else is to blame ?….. Certainly not Tony Abbott !!!
Sales & Marketing 101. Churn out a product & content, long enough to a disaffected reading audience & you reap what you sow.
Fairfax’s failure was its paranoia with Murdoch’s News Ltd. It decided it would oppose News Ltd’s conservative views & chose the opposite political spectrum. Fatally flawed policy. Had it remained balanced, recognising & respecting readers may just have their own right to likes & dislikes, they may not have alienated half their readership…….and its fall from grace could have been avoided.
This re-organisation down-size is not surprising. Brace for more if the share price dives reaching a panic ‘SELL at-any-price’ dictum.
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Fairfax management, somebody recently said, “couldn’t run water downhill”.
Also, how do you make a small business? Give Fairfax a big business.
They were dead and buried when Rural Press took over. The Rural Press DNA is cut, cut, cut. One trick pony, running out of room to move.
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The reporting of the ASADA saga proved they have no journalistic integrity.
End can’t come soon enough.
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Yes Kat, you are wrong, there have been many, many redundancies from other areas, admin, sales and pre-press, etc, in fact many pre-press departments have been closed entirely in favour of a 4 hubs dotted around the country, there jobs being replaced by overseas workers, you just haven’t heard about it, because journo’s being the front line, get most of the attention. You need to tour a newspaper site while you still can, just to see what’s involved in getting a paper on your kitchen table!
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Having read through these comments, and worked as a mere contractor and contributor for almost 20 years at the SMH, I can’t help but concur with the lot of ya. I will add one thing: Burke’n’Wills has made a very salient point indeed. So many folk I talk to, my mother’s gen and those at the local golf club, have cancelled their subs because of the perceived left-wing bias. Darren Goodsir has to wear the blame here. Ex News Ltd, chip on the shoulder, ex Labor-minister media advisor, clearly with axes to grind and bones to pick. It’s his bias which shines through and that has alienated the rusted-on readership including me. At the same time, the online content doesn’t capture the young left-leaning minds either. It’s like newspaper purgatory and ‘regurgitory’ via twitter feeds. It’s very sad. But, above all, the SMH has lost its identity, that of being Sydney, its connection and relevance. It’s not harnessing community comment, discussing local things with us, the micro issues, the minutiae, the meaning of Sydney life from day to day. It’s on its own trip to nowhere. The Oz, as much as I despise Murdoch Press, has some good reads with more cultural connection. I’m enjoying it more and more. Just an honest unbiased view from a newspaper tragic.
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Sydney Morning Herald, once Australia’s leading newspaper is soon to become Australia’s leading newsletter.
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Despite there being no evidence to support their beliefs, many of the journalists who worked at Fairfax over the past 30 years considered they were better than other journalists working in Sydney. It was a snobby attitude, which filtered through to many areas of the SMH.
Regardless of that the biggest problem the group has faced is not being leftwing (because it is clearly not) it is a board, which has made one bad decision after bad decision. It is not possible to produce a newspaper without journalist, but the Fairfax management seem to be trying their hardest to do it.
There are always things wrong in any organisation, but if anyone knows something the Fairfax board has got right since the takeover of Channel 7 in Melbourne many decades ago, could they let everyone know.
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I DO lean left but I have to say the blatant agenda of the SMH to push people to the left on issues is annoying to readers and turns them away, e.g. on immigration they are always trying to make us feel something instead of just reporting the story. Also, why the endless references to “elite Sydney School” etc etc. All schools have issues but the SMH seems to delight in revealing issues at “elite schools”. Who cares about them in particular? And der, aren’t most readers of the SMH sending their kids to independent secondary schools? Why would you alienate them with reporting of trivial matters? Not politically correct to report what goes on in public schools?? I think the board should be looking at the management not the poor old staff.
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I’m a subscriber, although no longer sure why….It’s become the Sydney Morning Typo….virtually every article has at least one now. I can cope with that. But it’s a daily reminder of a sad loss of pride, a retreat from quality. The remaining journalists do their best to overcome the shrinking vision I’m sure. I guess I’m still subscribing out of loyalty to them, and in the hope that management will eventually have an idea. Even the digital presentation is awful compared to others around the world. Times are indeed tough. But continually cutting and self-harming the product will not prove to be the answer.
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I sold my shares because I don’t believe Fairfax has a future. Hywood says the quality journalism is central, then says the company has always published trash. (The spin being that today’s trash is no worse than yesterday’s trash.) Hywood also implies that the real estate advertising is a business, yet the main driver of Domain is clearly the branding of real estate across all its titles – which means that as the print is reduced bits of the Domain value will collapse. Domain certainly is not a pure online play like REA.
From what I can see the paid content business is growing on the web, especially in video, but also in various paid content sites. But Fairfax has very deliberately undermined its brands with trashy titillations and bias. It is certainly no surprise to read above that the Herald editor is a former ALP staffer.
I can’t imagine that the market won’t find a way to create a business for good reporting, but in my view Fairfax is not even looking for that option. Like too many of our public companies, its board and management seem to be lacking insight and focused purely on short term responses to market expectations: a recipe for failure. They should be ashamed.
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