The Age publisher David Hoath promoted to COO of Fairfax Metro Media
David Hoath, the CEO and publisher of Melbourne newspaper The Age, has been promoted to COO of Fairfax Metro Media, Hoath has confirmed with Mumbrella.
The move sees the position of publisher for Fairfax Metro Media abolished, an internal memo from boss Jack Matthews has revealed.
Matthews explained: “The new COO role will play a critical part in the redesign and reinvigoration of our print mastheads. The COO role will also be responsible for the day to day running of the mastheads, including centralised circulation strategy and sales, manufacturing, distribution and facility management.”
Five new roles will report into COO.
Operations directors for Sydney, Melbourne and Canberra will be appointed to manage day to day masthead and sectional P&Ls.
A new production director role has been created to manage Metro wide production activities across all geographies. “This centralised role has also been created with a view to form a “state of the art” product hub for all Metro content, in line with the content hub outlined in the Editorial Review,” Matthews explained.
The final role reporting to the COO is the new director of circulation and newspaper sales.
Hoath’s promotion coincides with the appointment of Gautam Mishra, COO for Digital
Media, to stategy director for the Metro division.
Matthews’ note also revealed that the company is looking to hire a chief marketing officer – the final piece of the executive management jigsaw.
It really is hard to see how Fairfax expects to change when they just keep doing the same things. This is just another extra layer of bureaucracy. It adds nothing in terms of product skill or business insight. It adds cost. Sigh…
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NO, its actually not that hard to see when you take off the blinkers.
Its hardly an extra layer when several other layers have been abolished. Their news senior structure does have people will v. good skills with product and business insight, and more importantly how to get more customers !!
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I’m with Nevis. How much insight will someone like that bring to a company that needs to become entirely product focused. Another print bureaucrat shuffled around.
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