Just like most newspaper owners, Fairfax has better journalists than it deserves
In the ongoing saga of the management of Fairfax Media, it’s sometimes easy to miss the obvious.
The reason that the future of the company matters is that despite its, at times hopeless, owners, it still has good products and great journalists.
Today’s Sydney Morning Herald is a case in point.
Its front page recounts its year-long legal battle to tell its readers about the activities of the so-called Advanced Medical Institute.
The AMI is the organisation whose billboards and TV ads regularly top the most complained about ads list. And it even attracted an undercover investigation by Naked Communications’ Adam Ferrier.
The SMH’s work is a classic piece of investigative, expensive, campaigning journalism about an important issue of public concern. The paper’s legal costs were more than $500,000 to get it into the public domain. With the AMI yesterday being placed in administration, it remains to be seen whether the SMH – PANPA’s newspaper of the year for the second time running – will get that money back.
Add to the fact that the second story on the page is yet another Wikileaks exclusive – this time on Rudd’s rushed proposals to create a new Asia Pacific organisation – and any editor in the world would be proud to have this as a front page, particularly on the dead news week that usually precedes Christmas. The fact that the scandal of the NSW government’s banana republic tactics of closing Parliament early is only third story says a lot too.
(Slightly more grubbily, I see that the newspaper’s commercial colleagues at Fairfax Digital have placed the AMI story in its small business section of its website where advertisers such as banks and telcos pay a much higher CPM in the hopes of reaching owners of small businesses.)
On every news publication I ever worked on, the best journalism tended to take place despite, rather than because of, the management. Fortunately, with newspapers, the journalism is the last thing to go, even as other corners are cut.
As today’s SMH demonstrates, it’s the journalists that mean newspapers are still relevant.
Tim Burrowes
Tim Burrowes founded Mumbrella in 2008. He worked on Mumbrella until 2021. At various points he was editor, content director and editor-at-large.
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Agreed, great work SMH!
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And this is the great tragedy. And it’s the same at the The Age and the Australian Financial Review, I’d argue. This company employs the finest journalists in the land. And they are let down every single day by the sheer incompetence of their managers. Outrageous, near-criminal incompetence. Management who don’t understanding journalism, who don’t care about journalism, and who can’t even recognise that good journalism is the ONLY market advantage this miserable, rotten company has.
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Great stuff SMH, taking social eczema like AMI to task
My problem with Fairfax has never neen been about the quality of content, it is how they consistently damage the brand with whatever “magic-dust” ad solution used to pump up the stats – pre-rolls, auto-refresh, OTPs that cover the masthead etc. I dont think for a moment that there are any easy solutions to solve the Gordian knot of online for the papers, i just do not believe that superficial fixes are the way to go.
The times they are a changing and you would be a fool not to realise the importance of a strong, independent media. Now is not the time to abandon the values that built the paper
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After reading Adam Ferrier’s brilliant piece on these shyster’s (see: http://consumerpsychologist.bl.....tting.html ) I posted:
“At a time when newspapers are in decline this post begs the question: Why does it take a Consumer Psychologist from a comms agency to shine the spotlight? Adam, brilliant work, but seriously where are the current affairs programs?”
APOLOGIES SMH!
thomasr
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Great yarn, but terrible presentation on the page – why run the Christmas border around the whole page, incorporating the AMI and Wikileaks stories?
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The link to the AMI article currently displays some of the sneakiest ad work Fairfax has yet attempted. Upon loading the page, I got a pop-out ad from SBS that covered 90% of the page, and launched in a way that meant the “close” button wasn’t revealed for about 4 seconds. By the time it appeared and I clicked close, the auto-launch video in the actual article had counted down from 5, and commenced playing a 15 second ad.
I’m impressed and appalled.
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The Fairfax websites are beyond annoying to read without Adblock. Why they continue to allow their marketing department compromise readership beats me!
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And the front page of todays smh.com.au has the lead articles ‘Sons saved from Fireball’ and ‘Nude-photos teen’s scandal posters’.
Hmmm, one step forward ten steps back….
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Standards of journalism are very subjective – but SMH does seem to attract very good journalists due to the brand name and prestigious past the publication has attained.
I would say that that the continued argument about ‘pop up’ advertising is cumbersome and boring as no one seems to come up with a alternative solution to fund this free journalism. Of course you and I would love to read advert free articles, but how else can publications fund these great journalists. Ugly Pop ups will remain a necessary inconvenience until the back lash to paying for media sites subsides.
I personally have wieghed this necessary evil and enjoy free journalism at teh expense of waiting 4 seconds to click the close button.
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So the Fairfax pursuit of AMI cost in the region of $500,000.
How much did you pay Fairfax to read that online article, Manuel? Would it have been in the region of $0.00?
And yet whinge whinge whinge that you had to look at an advertisment.
The massed resources of a national broadsheet newspaper delivered to you, FREE, and you whinge about a pop-up advertisement.
People aren’t prepared to pay for news any more. Which is why, more and more, they’ll be getting the news coverage they deserve.
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Congratulations SMH on brilliant work, and well done Tim for bringing it to our industries attention.
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