Nine reverses Fairfax outsourcing to bring sub-editors back inhouse
The Age, Sydney Morning Herald, and Australian Financial Review newsrooms are to see a boost in staff following Nine’s announcement that the mastheads will bring sub-editing functions back in-house.
24 positions are to be created after Nine revealed it was discontinuing its 2016 sub-editing agreement that saw 70 Fairfax jobs outsourced to Pagemasters, saying the move “will better enable the three mastheads to raise the quality of their journalism for readers and subscribers.”
Executive editor of the SMH and The Age, James Chessell, said: “This is great news that reflects the importance of The Age and The Herald’s journalism”
Nine said in a statement it expected the new staff to be in place by September 30, ending a period where the publisher had repeatedly tried outsourcing sub-editing functions including a 2011 deal with Pagemasters which it abandoned three years later in an attempt to offshore the roles to New Zealand.
Financial Review Editor-in-Chief Michael Stutchbury thanked Pagemasters for their work over a number of years: “This decision is warmly welcomed by the Financial Review as we believe it will allow us to redouble our efforts to build cross-platform production expertise and boost the quality of our products for subscribers.”
Executive editor of the SMH and The Age, James Chessell, added: “This is great news that reflects the importance of The Age and The Herald’s journalism as well as the mastheads’ strong financial position.
“Subscribers expect quality and having our production resources as part of the same team will improve our ability to edit and present our journalism.”
Director of MEAA Media, Katelin McInerney, welcomed Nine’s move, saying: “We’re very pleased at the decision. We always questioned the wisdom and economics of the outsourcing to Pagemasters and it seems Nine has agreed. Hopefully it will be beneficial for readers as we’ll soon see an improvement in the quality of the papers’ products.”
Nine is a shareholder in Pagemasters’ parent company, AAP, and Pagemasters will continue to provide some production services to Nine’s mastheads covering racing pages, TV listings, advertising feature page layouts and comment moderation.
Twenty-four subs will be working their arses off.
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Twenty-four subs will be working their arses off.
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Excellent….presumably a return to less linguistic blunders.
Cheers
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Why is this being played up so much? In reality it will simply mean some people at AAP lose jobs and some others – on lower pay – go to work at Nine.
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This is great news. However, it’s concerning that 70 jobs were outsourced but only 24 are being brought back in-house.
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It’s ‘fewer linguistic blunders’
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Presumably you meant to say “fewer”? (The pedants are revolting, Sire!”
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Presumably you meant to say “fewer”? (The pedants are revolting, Sire!”
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I think you’ll find that AAP stopped providing subbing services several years ago, with sub editing being outsourced to New Zealand. So in fact, this will be a return of jobs to Australian shores, where they should have been kept in the first place.
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When do they start advertising for these positions?
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As for linguistic blunders, ‘fewer’, not ‘less’, a blunder that is very irritating. We have so many nuances of meaning is our wonderful language; please let’s use them.
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