‘Incompetent, timid, short-sighted’. Journo attacks Aussie media management
A journalist has launched an impassioned attack on Australia’s media companies including his own, accusing them of “sheer management incompetence”.
Writing in his blog, Importance of Ideas, Jason Whittaker says:
“The recession is not killing Big Media in this country, as the sales department will tell you. Nor is the internet and digital media to blame, as the prevailing theory goes. Media companies in Australia are struggling to make a buck through a lack of imagination. Through short-sightedness. Through commercial timidity, certainly. Ultimately, though sheer management incompetence.”
Whittaker is a managing editor at Brisbane-based Trader Business Media, a division of ACP magazines.
Criticising Fairfax Media for perservering with its failed set of managers despite its recent restructure and News Ltd for failing to take its web strategy beyond “recycling its content and other wire copy”, he also turns his fire on PBL.
As well as ACP, PBL also owns the Nine Network’s east coast TV stations. Whittaker says: “But, despite being saddled with a newsstand full of magazines in circulation decline and a terrestrial television network fewer people want to watch, its private equity owners put the place deep into debt to fund a purchase well over the odds. Now the knives are out to keep up with the interest repayments. The naivety of the foreign buyers, and for that matter the management that sold them this lemon, is stunning.”
The journalist is clearly aware that his attack could hurt his career prospects. He starts the piece saying: “What I’m about to say will probably ensure I never work for a major media company again (and could get me sacked from my current position). But right now I’m so disillusioned with the lot of them it wouldn’t worry me if I never did.”
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I, too, read Jason’s blog on the weekend and righteously agreed with him. The weird thing was, I figured he was right when he said the big bosses would probably ignore him anyway … that’s what they’ve been doing in regard to content for years. While they happily award themselves bonuses and allow sales teams to collude and collect commissions, they have been cutting content budgets and pinching on editorial salaries for decades. The biggest shame is that none of those managers could work out how to factor “cost of irrelevant content” into their budget spreadsheets.
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