Newspaper economics – cost now trumps credibility

Sometimes breaking news can be a real bastard.

Interesting but what is Mumbrella’s excuse for publishing yesterdays story about Sunrise and the lingerie show being watched by kids –
-https://mumbrella.com.au/sunrises-school-holiday-lingerie-parade-320724?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Mumbrella+daily+newsletter+Sept+24&utm_content=Mumbrella+daily+newsletter+Sept+24+CID_99dc16186810198a535c9750d034ab65&utm_source=Campaign

Not everything that is published is good -at least they had an excuse.

There was a pre-emptive strike in the form of a media release the day before publication, pleading the AFR’s case. Weren’t you on the distribution list, Tim?

Stuff happens, does it really matter, this is just an ego exercise anyway aimed at a few Sydney & Melbourne CBD suits and the odd Canberra player. No big deal, but hopefully MT will still be there to headline next year!!

It’s quite easy to lose quite a lot of money just by printing late, not even reprinting.

And not the little bit of money you already (probably, ahem) lose once you account for all the hidden costs, but just in printing and distribution alone.

The AFR not having the election result in the next morning’s paper was embarrassing beyond belief. The spill vote was at 9pm, we all knew the result by 10.
Surely the AFR could have extended it’s deadline for something as momentous as that?
Hopeless.

Fairfax is becoming a joke. The SMH/Age websites are purely driven by clickbait, and full of misleading headlines just to get punters to click through. The papers are a shadow of their former selves and the websites bulked out with rubbish

I am with you Tim, puts me in mind of the po-faced salesperson in a Shanghai market I recently visited: “yes these are Mont Blanc cufflinks.” Why bother?

Hi Tim, thanks for taking the time to analyse the dilemma we faced. You make some valid points but are wrong about cost driving what was a very tough decision.
There were many factors considered, including cost, obviously, but also the ability to insert a reprinted issue into another week’s paper. We would have missed today’s deadline if we had done the entire thing again and there are other magazines inserted into the AFR on most other Fridays of the month. If we’d reprinted for next Friday, which we considered, we would have had to go to print before the Turnbull Cabinet was announced, risking making that issue out of date also.
As it was, we had a day to turn around a new cover and new insert and retain it in today’s paper. Getting the panel together again in anything like that time-frame would have been impossible; we re-interviewed them by phone and in some cases, email, for the insert.
One of the biggest factors in our deliberations was that the essays and lists told a really interesting story about power in the year just gone, which is what our Power issue always analyses. We thought their analysis of Tony Abbott’s final year worthwhile reading – and as it turned out, highly prescient.
Finally, unlike in days gone by, we had the chance to update everything for online.
Not ideal, I am the first to admit. But in the circumstances, we believe the right decision.
Katrina Strickland
Editor, The Australian Financial Review Magazine

haha, what a joke….

This is why Internet news trumps print news, and why newspaper readership is falling. The print edition is out-of-date the moment it leaves the printers

What a waste of time.

Disrespectful to readers in my opinion. If it’s worth doing, it’s worth doing properly.

Isn’t this tangential to the real issue this event has raised – that the whole idea of prognostication on who will hold the power is just silly?
Because that’s the point of this kind of article, isn’t it? Not just to describe how things are now (which the AFR readers should already know) but to tell readers who to watch in future?

Once a premium product. Now somewhat stricken and desperate. This is what Corbett and Maserati Man have delivered.

Well Pete, I don’t know where you live but in fairness to the AFR they did actually produce an edition with the result, albeit a bit later. Just as The Australian and possibly other papers around the country that had to print to the usual deadlines. It was simply too late for delivery to the regions.

I think most older readers in particular understand that these days, but in a way it’s always been the case, the radio shows and in recent years breakfast television will update you. Yeh, the papers may seem a joke these days, but show me a website that does better on insight and analysis, only Guardian Australia comes close.

Today I read my Fin online because I didn’t go into the office. Firstly I didn’t even see the Magazine Power Issue. More importantly I didn’t see any of the advertising as mentioned by Mumbrella.

A stupid decision (not to reprint) is simply because it is lead by an accountant, rather than an editor, and should not be seen as a harbinger of the death of newsprint.

give them a bloody break, Fairfax might be a company but its people who work there…people who are working their arses off in newsrooms half the size of a decade ago, who haven’t had a pay rise in that time, and go to work every Monday wondering whether they’ll still be employed at the end of the week.

Karrina has answered the critics more than adequately and with great dignity
We once produced a special placed on top of the weekend oz of special prosecutor Starr’s report into Clintons affair with Paula Jones
Katrina Did and admirably job in extraordinary circumstances
No production journal

No production journalist working in today terrible environment could find fault
I don’t
I wonder if those who shout the loudest work as production journalists now if ever
For what’s it worth it was sold out at my newsagent

Oh how I miss those nights when we all sat around the radio and listened to the News and lively dance music.

Oh how I miss those days we’d all sit around on a Saturday morning and read the Herald.

Oh how I miss those Sunday nights when 60 Minutes was the hottest show on TV.

Oh well.

Back to Resist the MSM on the iPad…

This isn’t entirely new. Over thirty years ago, Rupert Murdoch was warned prior to publication that the so-called “Hitler diaries” were forgeries. All he had to do was pull the story until the diaries were verified. His response was, “F— Dacre. Publish.” And so the Sunday Times went ahead with the most humiliating own goal in the history of journalism.

Ok, Print, Ghost of Dot Parker speaking: Yours is not a model to be tossed aside lightly. It should be thrown with great force.

This is an intervention. I ask that you immediately cease & desist any further “breaking news” activity. It’s become cringe-worthily embarrassing. You’re the well-past MILF woman in leopard-print, dears, and we can’t cope with the referred shame much longer. It’s actually painful. Stop.

Tim, you speak so nostalgically of days past when editors pulled or held print runs for accuracy. Sure, but there was an implied responsibility then to be a reliable news source. Unless you are seriously worried about posterity, NO ONE is reading the papers for NEWS anymore so please stop wasting lovely ink on the Most Boring Thing in Print: yesterday’s news, today’s expensive fish wrapper.

What will you do with all that ink? Long form. Analysis. Op-ed. In short, be the Last Week Tonight and NOT Larry Wiltmore’s weird thing (or Noah’s epic fail, for that matter). Develop a personality now that your responsibilities have flown the coop: you can be irreverent or silly or witty or rude now! Kids are gone! Katrina is half right. The long opinion pieces on Abbott would have been far better with a “*shrug*, this will be worth something someday” attitude rather than this weird denial you’re sporting recently.

Oh, is this not news anymore?? Those millenials!! This is why we can’t have nice things! *fist shake*

It’s leaving you broke and us bored and bitchy about you turning into an advertorial (or as those damned hipsters call it now, “native”). Think about it. If you are neither news nor interesting, you are almost by definition, BORING and IRRELEVANT. AFR should have left Abbott on the cover if he was slated to be there (and no, bad idea any day of the year) and lost the insert. Actually, if they’d stayed out of news like I told you all to do, we wouldn’t be in this bother, would we?!

So, recap: YOU LOST THE BATTLE, Dear Inky Friends. It’s over. Truly over, too, not Click Bait “over”. If you keep running a race against reality, you will lose the war too, and that would be a damn shame for readers and fish-eaters alike (also Ink Factories, let us not forget).

Love, Faithful Reader,
(until recently, when you morphed into leopard-print-leather-bound Aunt Maude and scarred my retinas if not my soul..)

[Edited under Mumbrella’s comment moderation policy]

ok, that last bit was harsh, but i must entertain myself in a world lacking CONTENT

@Constant Reader. Your supplementary comment is a contradiction. All of these dots are connected. Decline of Newspapers is a consequence of erosion of revenue. Revenue pays for journalists and allows them time to research and write better articles. Better articles equals better content. The on-line alternative hasn’t yet filtered out the amateurs, the incapable and the incompetent.Until on-line has content worth paying for it won’t win the race. Presently the only commercialised alternative is print.

Don’t forget that in the 18th and 19th centuries almost every man and his dog owned a newspaper (so called news sheet or journal). They were use to express personal agendas and weren’t commercial.

We are going back to the future!