When newspaper managements ‘back’ themselves

I couldn’t agree more Tim. Yes, it’s traumatic to have to cut staff. And yes, it’s sometimes necessary for the business and people who have to do this unpleasant work should be remunerated in a way that takes into account the difficulty of the task. But the idea that your bonus increases on the basis of your capacity to sack people, and you somehow see this as evidence of your willingness to back yourself when the staff won’t, well that’s risible. Why are these people so tin-eared?

Well said sir.

Great Piece, Tim. All very well for Gail Hambly et al to argue that they are backing themselves by tying a big chunk of their remuneration to hitting targets, and that the journalists aren’t prepared to do this. I must have missed the bit where Fairfax management offered their journos the the opportunity to “back themselves” by giving them the chance to score massive bonuses on hitting certain targets?

And if fairfax management really were prepared to back themselves, they would actually reduce their base pay and increase the incentive component tied to targets. As it is, they’ve just kept their base pay unchanged and added a big fat dollop of cream on top. Nothing like leading by example, huh? Fairfax journos have every right to feel badly let down.

Yup, that’s where the Australian press is at – a pretty bad place.

I don’t want to sound unsympathetic to individual ethical journalists who are going to unjustly pay the price for their colleagues crimes but basically – the Australian public hates (I don’t think that’s too strong a word) and distrusts the press in this county. As we keep finding out more and more about unethical practices in Aussie journalism – Frankly it’s easy to see why. As everyone knows it’s a hell of a lot easier to lose trust than get it back – and the trust is dead now. Not only that, barely a week goes by without a major paper/publisher in this country beating up its corpse.

We talk about journalists being “let down” by their management who push them into unethical practices/unrealistic pressure – but how long can you blame it on your bosses until you decide to choose you’ve either got to stand up for ethical practice – or get a new job. I mean does the Australian Medical Association let itself get pushed around by hospital managers? Sure a little – but not to the level of scummy practice that is common in current Australian journalism. Journalist have the choice of taking a stand to win back the public’s trust or stand by watching their profession die because the public doesn’t buy information they don’t trust.

Its pretty obvious which choice is being made at present.

Look, clearly responsibility rests more firmly on management than journalists for the current state of play. But don’t underplay the danger posed by an honest individual. They can’t stop the race to the bottom, but they don’t have to take part.

Well said Tim.

On the one hand, I want to cancel my SMH subscription. On the other, I do want to support the work of the people . This is another example of corporate mismanagement on a grand scale. A disconnect between day to day people required to run the business and those intent on playing board games. Flogging assets – often wise investment decisions made under previous managements/boards – is by no means a performance worthy of a bonus if you’re selling it to stay afloat.

Corporate Leadership in Australia has once again taken another blow this month, CommBank being the start.

You’ve got to wonder whether it’s a sign of things to come.

Excellent story. One anecdote to add lack of professionalism at Fairfax; I live in Fairfax heartland less than 10km from the CBD, and stopped buying Saturday’s SMH a while ago because ridiculous deadlines meant they were unable to include results from the previous night’s NRL and AFL matches. Maybe we were getting country edition. Fairfax – taking the news out of newspapers.

Great article Tim – I was a 3 newspaper a day guy (AFR, OZ, SMH) for 20 years, but kicked the habit 5 years ago when I got an iPad.
All of the cost-cutting at Fairfax has seen a declining standard of sub-editing and a lack of depth of content. As a prime example, last week they published a preview of the EPL (English Football) which was entirely syndicated, and did not have any original Fairfax content.
They still have great columnists, and magazine sections like Good Living are fantastic, but it is hard to justify paying for it, when you can get it for free from Huffington Post and other overseas Web sites.

News…*sigh*

Capitalism is the failure here.

when your income is based on sacking people, youre going to sack people, meet your targets and get out.

The Media as we knew it is dying (possibly dead) we need an alternative. The society we live in is changing and we need an alternative

In another life a few years back I worked on the Fairfax business. I encountered the inevitable struggle between Marketing who were seeking to maintain & grow readership and increase circulation and Editorial who fought for journalistic integrity and standards.

Getting campaigns and readership promotions approved by Editorial was like going through a tooth extraction. There was no shortage of brands who wanted to partner with the papers but they made it incredibly difficult for anyone to give them revenue. When all parties finally agreed it was usually watered down and had an ‘Advertisement’ badge placed on it. Shock! Horror! We were trying to sell something!

Online papers were apparently the answer to capturing falling circulations as pages loaded with expensive madly flashing banners, page take-overs and irritating auto play videos would “engage consumers” but produced nothing but abysmal click-thru rates. Tim, your “less than $2 per day” from subscriptions sums up the dismal outcome for paywalls.

By this time the chest beating of journalistic integrity and maintaining standards faded away. Waves of people were sacked and replaced with marketing content writers and native advertising where the desperate publisher will disguise ads to make them look like news. Outcomes where consumers can not tell the difference are applauded in the hunt to find revenue that has steadily disappeared.

Perhaps it’s only a matter of time before brands will own the lead stories and believable, credible journalism will be a distant memory.

For those of us working at Fairfax, this is a huge slap in the face. Hywood and co have profited off the backs of journos, producers and staff who have spent the past few years adjusting to cuts to staff and budget, having to work harder to produce more out of less. Management keeps spruiking this digital-first strategy, while simultaneously imposing cuts to the digital staff. They talk about how our photojournalists are world class, then decide we don’t need to keep all of them.

Not to mention the effect all this has had on a mental scale, pulling long hours, neglecting sleep, being under constant pressure to feel the beast that is the 24 hour news cycle. When you see a typo on the site, it’s not the act of a careless hack who couldn’t be bothered to spell-check, it’s the oversight of someone who’s exhausted after working a 15 hour day with fewer resources and colleagues to help.

The awful thing is, many of us have and are willing to continue to break our backs for Fairfax, because funnily enough, we believe in speaking truth to power and delivering the news. And this is the thanks we get.

Fair go, Fairfax? Hardly.

@ Tony: digital subscriptions not generating less than $2 a day. It’s less than $2 A WEEK.

Get rid of the suits and hire amazing talent, encouraging them to invent, pay everyone fairly focus on digital: What both News and Fairfax should have done 15 years ago. Google beat em to it…

Thanks Tim. Eloquent and accurate and observant as ever.
As both a SMH and Rural Press alumni, I observed some absolutely woeful “yes-men”* get promoted to their particular level of incompetence (viz. Peter Principle.) * Yes, they were ALL men. Back in the 80s/90s to mid 2000s, it didnt really matter. The money rolled, the lunches were had. The stupidity reined, but the dedicated journos kept doing their thing and the readers kept reading. That era is now gone/deceased. Yours here is just one of the many obituaries being written.

As a former Fairfax employee and lover of the brand, the point missed in this article is that Tim’s opinion is nostalgic. I also went through the school of journalism where Fairfax media was hailed as the height of integrity and esteem. However that was in the age before the digital rise. I hate to see good journalists fired, but the business model has changed. Your reported figures show this and the decline in print is as much an audience caused problem as it is management.

Tim’s key point about raises goes to the managerial principles Fairfax is holding to, which I can not say is right or wrong based on now being outside the company. However its key to note in all print decline discussions that the glory days have passed and are not coming back. Consumers have moved on, even those of us who grew up with newspapers as key reliable sources of information.

This goes out to everyone, Fairfax management included, its time to stop looking to reclaim the past and think about the newspapers we want for the future and/or if they will play a role in future media. Tour any universities media lectures, newspapers are taught as old media, not what they should be focusing their careers on. Lets work with them, not hold onto the good old days. 173 years was a fantastic effort, but its time to look ahead.

@stantheman…you’re right…its even worse!

had to laugh at Sue Cato’s advice and undergraduate email error

it’s certainly not the first yet she manages to stay in business

I had to laugh because that’s the only advice she ever gives….either don’t answer a journo’s call, tell your PA that you’re out of town, or say ‘no comment’

in light of this her ongoing success is truly extraordinary

“I observed some absolutely woeful “yes-men”* get promoted to their particular level of incompetence”

Summed up perfectly @ C(d)L When the greedy fossils in charge, wearing blinkers and pinching the P&L with no regard for the audience, or overall staff EVP, you get what is happening now.

Any company with a ‘board’ is a load of old tosh.

The extremely obvious point here is that these managers don’t actually do the bits that earn the money. The cost cuts are delivered by the line management (and consultants!)_
Hambly has absolutely no right to pocket a cracker of bonus. It’s a joke. She is very clearly a LARGE cost reduction option. (Just check out what corporate counsel get at large companies.)
Hywoods pay should be compared with someone who is managing a business in transition. Like Thodey at Telstra, which is about a billion times larger. Thodey’s pay is MUCH harder to earn than Hywood’s. It’s also in line with the size of the business.
Clear it’s all down to Corbett, who needs to go soon.

Thanks Tim, another great piece. On the back of your Cannes/Scam award piece, 2 best editorials of the year so far

Seems like the General Counsel is a one-woman Cost Centre. How long will it take Australian businesses to learn?
Just because a self-selected few from a very shallow talent pool buy in their own language and metrics to invent their own success, it doesn’t mean the confridiocy passing itself off as adequate board-members should sign off on them.

Not surprised by anything the SMH does after the way it ignored the Rule of Law when dealing with Craig Thomson.

Have a look at The Age website today; Are big breasts a curse? And Sexercise. A great alternative to the gym? The disconnect between the print and digital products has always been vast and means a lost print reader will not necessarily become a new digital subscriber. That’s a big issue.

It’s very fashionable to bash News and Fairfax management for their response to the digital challenge. However I think this is a largely academic discussion given the massive changes we have seen in the market and readership habits. Management and staff restructuring exercises while having a huge impact on individuals are houses made of matchwood before a tsunami. The reality is low growth from here on. The golden days are over

I publish free independent newspapers in two regional cities and I can say without hesitation that on paper quality, design and profile alone in the local community, our papers get 9 out of 10 and the Fairfax papers about 3 out of 10. My observations is that the Fairfax’s of this world have had it so good for so long they now simply out of their depth when it comes to using business savvy. Business has always been about determining what the customer wants and then finding a way to deliver it while making a profit. It seems to me that most of the big publishers are determining what they want to give customers and then forcing it upon them. Instead of adopting building strategies they are following a cost cutting strategy and done out of balance, that’ll never work. With their resources they should have killed our publications off long ago, now it seems they may be considering closing some of their regional papers. Papers aren’t dead, the model that people want is changing…that’s all. Our model is working.