Fairfax staff on strike until Monday, after company moves to sack 12.5% of news room
Fairfax journalists are set to strike until Monday after the publisher today planned job cuts which will see the equivalent of 120 full-time positions axed, with staff looking to walk off the job.
The strike, which would be equivalent of 12.5% of the newsroom, comes after a stop-work meeting at the Sydney Morning Herald voted 115 to 3 to strike against the action which is aimed at reducing costs across news and business in its Sydney and Melbourne newsrooms.
The move will likely see walk-outs at the SMH, The Age, The Canberra Times and associated online publications, although not all publications have yet voted to walk.
The Age staff is expected to walk out later today leaving the newspaper’s management and editors to put out the newspapers for the next three days.
.@smh walk out begins #fairgofairfax pic.twitter.com/9j6IJpGhqM
— Jake T Evans (@jcobevans) March 17, 2016
Management today said reduction in costs would be achieved through redundancies, tightening contributor budgets and reducing travel costs and expenses in what was described to Mumbrella as an “angry” staff meeting with Fairfax Media editorial director Sean Aylmer.
During the meeting Aylmer told staff that Fairfax currently produces some 9000 pieces of content a month, with half of that content being produced by contributors and freelancers, under the new plan this would reduce to 6000 pieces of content, with the ratio of staff-to-contributor content remaining unchanged.
Aylmer also told the room that journalists would need to focus on “effective” content, meaning stories which achieve strong online traffic.
Stopwork meeting now underway at @smh over @FairfaxMedia job cuts. #fairgofairfax#MEAAMediapic.twitter.com/AadDIb7Tji
— MEAA (@withMEAA) March 17, 2016
The statement about “effective” content drew an incendiary response from journalists, who expressed concern about management’s focus on “click bait”, with staff noting that powerful and important journalism didn’t always drive clicks on Fairfax websites.
According to Brad Walter, SMH league and sports reporter, the cuts represents more than 12.5% of the newsroom – or 1 in 8 jobs.
The loss of 120 editorial jobs at Fairfax represents more than 12.5 per cent of the newsroom or 1 in 8 journos #fairgofairfax
— Brad Walter (@BradWalterSMH) March 17, 2016
Staff were informed of the cuts this morning after an email from 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.”
As of 3pm today Fairfax shares were up 4.16% to $0.80.
Miranda Ward and Nic Christensen
Update 3.40pm: It is understood the staffs of The Age, Canberra Times, WA Today and Brisbane Times have all voted to walk out.
Update 4.11pm: Fairfax has issued a statement on the walk-outs saying it will continue to publish its newspapers and websites “as usual”.
The statement:
Fairfax Media Limited [ASX: FXJ] advises that some journalists from mastheads including The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, The Canberra Times, the Brisbane Times and The Australian Financial Review are taking unprotected industrial action relating to an announcement to staff today.The company will continue to publish across print and digital as usual.Fairfax Media Chief Executive Officer, Greg Hywood, said: “We are operating in an ever-changing highly competitive media environment which involves rapid evolution of our publishing model. The initiatives we have proposed today are part of that adaptation and are necessary to sustain high quality journalism.”
The action follows the company making a proposal today to reduce costs across its News and Business verticals in Sydney and Melbourne newsrooms by the equivalent of 120 full-time employees through a combination of redundancies, tightening contributor budgets and reducing travel costs and expenses.
The proposal involves newsrooms becoming more efficient in producing quality journalism.
I, for one, welcome the idea of Todd Sampson being stationed in the Fairfax newsroom the next 4 days. He will fill many column inches with tales of his solo adventures climbing Mount Everest.
Be bold, Todd Sampson, and go where no board member has gone before. Mush!
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Hard to imagine why the journos would think Hywood has any focus on sustained editorial quality. It’s all in one number: his pay packet.
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and what will the strike achieve…..absolutely nothing!!!!
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Its all about profit and nothing to do with quality content.
So much is free digitally – their old model is teetering on the edge of the abyss………..unfortunately.
It has to change.
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Correct Numbers. When will these cuts start to include Hywood and his old school clique? The slew of richly rewarded Managing Directors and Execs including recent high profile experiments have clearly proven to be incapable of building the promised new revenue streams and in most cases have done more harm than good. Meanwhile editorial are generating record audiences but continue to suffer the consequences of managements incompetence. This is not about transformation or trumpeting the last line of defence in Domain – look at that deal and the potential for generational nepotism. Enough of the same old shoddy spin. They shouldn’t be able to cut, cut, cut, cut, cut and all keep their jobs at the top. This strike should demand accountability for murky managements many failures. For too long they have been untouched or left to make poor decisions and mishandle important decisions. Commercial instinct and leadership is clearly lacking. It’s time the shareholders and staff took back control and demand the board wakes up to what is actually happening at Fairfax.
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Correct numbers. When will these cuts include Hywood and his old school clique? The slew of richly rewarded “Managing Directors and Execs” have proven to be incapable of building the promised new revenue streams and in most cases have done more harm than good. Meanwhile editorial are generating record audiences but continue to suffer the consequences of managements incompetence. These strikes should demand accountability for murky managements many failures. For too long they have been untouched or left to make poor decisions and mishandle important decisions.
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When you’ve got a company with new revenue generating streams either stagnating (digital subscriptions) or growing very slowly (digital advertising) compared to the pace that old revenues are falling, like print advertising (quickly) and print subscriptions (reasonably quickly), there’s really only a couple of answers – either find alternative revenue streams (they can’t) or shrink (they can).
Fairfax suffers from being used to being this huge organisation with a complex managerial structure funding all sorts of weird and (not) wonderful things, rather than being lean and mean and focused.
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How are all “major new revenue Opportunities” that you talked up 3 years ago going for you, Mr Hywood? Content Marketing, events, marketing services for small businesses and data — guess the $$ from these aren’t exactly pouring in? The ONLY thing keeping Fairfax afloat is Domain. Take that away and there is no business.
https://mumbrella.com.au/fairfax-boss-greg-hywood-going-get-content-marketing-business-188456
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As of 3pm today Fairfax shares were up 4.16% to $0.80.
I can’t believe the market buys this ridiculous argument that Fairfax can cut it’s way out of the mess it’s in. The fact they continue to make these very big cuts – after already shedding many hundreds of staff — simply highlights that they are having no success at building strong new revenue streams to replace the $$ hemorrhaging out of print.
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This quote from Greg Hywood re today’s events: “The initiatives we have proposed today are part of that adaptation and are necessary to sustain high quality journalism,”
Huh? How do you propose to sustain high quality journalism by sacking the people you need to produce it? Maybe you should apply the same logic to yourself: in an attempt to sustain high quality executive management at Fairfax, you could sack yourself and the rest of the executive team.
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Would the last person at Fairfax please turn the lights out.
These sackings are likely a prelude to the axing of the weekday print edition, which has been predicted for some time.
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pay for Fairfax greeny content
or…
get the same stuff for free from the ABC?
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…and it’s unlike ABC, where trifling matters of ‘revenue’, ‘expenditure’ and ‘advertising’ don’t matter.
Less money = cutbacks. Seems the Fairfax staff have trouble understanding they’re not on equal footing with their ABC brethren.
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As one who suffered the ignominy of being told there was ‘no clear or obvious role’ at Fairfax after 25 years service in a variety of editorial capacities – isn’t it apparent that those at the pointy end are simply on performance contracts and once the job is done – (and the plane is about to crash into the economic abyss) – they’ll simply don a chute and move on.
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neoliberalism in action
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