Journalists union: By axing hundreds of subs, Fairfax is reneging on quality journalism
The boss of journalists’ union the Media, Entertainment & Arts Alliance has accused Fairfax Media of deciding to “renege on its commitment to quality, independent journalism” by axing hundreds of jobs through the outsourcing of copy subbing.
The move was announced by new Fairfax CEO Greg Hywood earlier today.
The move will see copy subbing of news, business and sports pages on the Sydney Morning Herald, The Age and the Canberra Times, outsourced to AAP’s Pagemasters.
Chris Warren, Federal Secretary of the Media, Entertainment & Arts Alliance said this afternoon:
With agencies such as AAP creating much of our wholesale content these days, and now doing the subbing as well, can someone please remind me what the role of a newspaper is anymore?
Woeful! Newspaper executives could not make a decision to save themselves. Reports of the death of the newspaper have not been greatly exaggerated. They die by their own hand
Sub-editors have already been gutted – quality journalism a fallacy – might as well get rid of the rest of them and get a brief spike in a sliding share price.
The slow death of newspapers continues….the end is nigh.
@Caitlin, while I agree the increase in outsourcing on the part of Fairfax is deplorable, I think it’s a tad unfair to question whether newspapers still have a role. You only need to listen to the radio in the morning or watch the news on breakfast TV to find out the answer to that. Every second story – at a minimum – is sourced from one of the major newspapers
Is good journalism in news gathering (reporting) or is it in subbing. Many people will say in both – with online media subbing is losing it’s prevalence as typists have in the computer age. As a former journalist, I can say that the news operation as we knew it is dead..
news is commoditized business. Wake up to that fact.
n a perfect world it wouldn’t hapen. But fairfax is stuffed if we can’t win back readers, so re-alocating the money to the written word is the only option they have left. No reason why pagemasters can’t do a good job i the copy flow is adequate, and that means a gun COS.
Thanks Brett, I was hoping someone would take the bait and stand up in defence of the rags.
On the upside all those PRs will now get their press releases run in the SMH.
Just take a look at the error-ridden, grammatically challenged New Zealand newspapers to see what you’re in for.
We’ve had minimum wage backpackers handling the subbing here for the past three years. It’s not good.
Sub editors journalists — and many top-notch, highly-paid celebrity journos have been saved by a “lowly” downtable sub.
Taking good subs out of the process is to remove the last line of quality control.
Caitlin….the role of newspapers is pretty much the same, delivering news to millions of Australians…why is that so hard to understand?
I agree with @Brett; and to an extend @Caitlin.
Newspapers need to maintain their quality; not cost-cut from this department. As soon as quality slides, so do their authority and the people’s respect for them.
Wish Hywood would reconsider this shortsighted move.
Needed someone to sub-edit my above comment. case in point!
Down Johnny Boy, I get it. 😉
Since a flippant attempt at humour missed the mark, I’ll say this:
With many people preferring to get their news online, and in an era when stories are being broken in real time by the likes of Twitter (the guy who broke the Osama story was simply Tweeting his curious observations from up the street when he put two and two together) and not a broadsheet that was printed overnight, I’m interested to know what the the people reading this particular webpage think the new, redefined role of newspapers is/should be/could be?
“(the guy who broke the Osama story was simply Tweeting his curious observations from up the street when he put two and two together)”
But he didn’t actually break the story, did he? In fact, he only realised what he’d observed *after* hearing about the raid from the media.