Media - cutbacks, changes etc.

[ozbob]

Brisbanetimes --> Fairfax to shed 1900 staff, erect paywalls

[ozbob]

ABC News will do very well is my guess.

[Fares_Fair]

Brisbanetimes --> Fairfax to shed 1900 staff, erect paywalls

Good luck with that move... 

[ozbob]

Brisbanetimes is an important part of the media landscape in Queensland.  Be a real shame if that is paywalled, as I  doubt if there are enough around willing to pay for services in Queensland.  The Age and SMH will struggle on, but if Brisbanetimes becomes an e-outpost of those, the relevance and immediacy to Queensland will go. Particularly when ABC News is around (free and always will be).

[somebody]

Brisbanetimes is an important part of the media landscape in Queensland.  Be a real shame if that is paywalled, as I  doubt if there are enough around willing to pay for services in Queensland.  The Age and SMH will struggle on, but if Brisbanetimes becomes an e-outpost of those, the relevance and immediacy to Queensland will go. Particularly when ABC News is around (free and always will be).

Hard to see a benefit from this if Brisbanetimes continues as is.  Has basically the same content.

[ozbob]

This Fairfax announcement has created a fire-storm of sorts on the web ...  some very definite opinions.

I think as they all move behind pay-walls there will be a new class of media outlet come about.  Interesting many are saying they have given up on the Herald Sun (behind a firewall now for a few months) ...

Sacking 1900, many I assume journalists is going to impact very significantly on that profession. Some will re-invent news is my bet.

Rest assured, no plans for pay-walls here ... lol 

[ozbob]

Couriermail --> About 150 Fairfax editorial jobs to go

[ozbob]

From Crikey --> click here!

Ex-Fairfax editors on cuts: bold, brave, danger for democracy

Ex-Fairfax editors on cuts: bold, brave, danger for democracy
by Matthew Knott

Risky, long overdue and a threat to democracy: that's the verdict of former Fairfax editors on the dramatic overhaul of Fairfax's metropolitan newspapers announced this morning.

Michael Gawenda, a former editor-in-chief of The Age, told Crikey the decisions were sad but inevitable.

"None of this is good news for journalism; none of this is good news for people who believe that Fairfax has produced good papers," he said. "The old Fairfax papers and the old Fairfax media are gone. I can't imagine what the print papers will be like. It seems like an interim strategy on the way to closing down print altogether.

"It's a very risky strategy but they probably didn't have a choice. The share price was falling and they had to make a decision."

Gawenda said he was surprised by Fairfax's decision to adopt a tabloid format for The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age: "It's too late in the day. They should have done this eight or nine years ago. Going tabloid isn't going to save newspapers."

Gawenda's successor at The Age, Andrew Jaspan, was more positive, saying: "At last there is a proper radical rethinking that has been missing for the past 30 years.

"Broadly speaking, I applaud what they've done. At last they're having a logical, comprehensive look at what the future for Fairfax means ... They are being bold and brave and innovative in thinking about the future."

Jaspan says he expects editorial duplication to be slashed at The Age and SMH — a development that will boost the company's bottom line but further restrict diversity in reporting and analysis.

"The downside is where you had two defence or health correspondents you'll end up with just one. You're halving the number of voices in Fairfax. They'll be looking at cuts across everything: the environment, science, health, politics," he said.

"In Australia, our problem is a lack of plurality of voices. [Fairfax] are reducing the number of voices and number of specialist reporters who gather and analyse news."

Jaspan says he's optimistic about Fairfax's chances of succeeding with a New York Times-style paywall. He's also a big fan of the move to compact format — a change both he and Gawenda tried to drive through during their time as editor.

Broadsheet, Jaspan says, is a "shape that belongs in the past". He adds that people worried about a decline in quality should note that The New York Times, The Guardian and The Australian Financial Review are all published in compact formats.

Former SMH editor Eric Beecher (chairman of Crikey's parent company Private Media) says Fairfax has failed to explain how the changes will improve the quality of its reporting.

"I must have missed it in the Fairfax statement, but I didn't see the bit about how the company would be reinventing its journalism and its publications to make them both viable and editorially excellent over the next decade," he said. "Cutting toes, fingers and limbs from an antiquated journalism model doesn't quite achieve that objective."

Mike Smith, a former editor of The Age, described today's announcement as "painful": "The idea behind it is to support newspapers not to kill them. It's a shame they didn't do something like this 20 years ago."

Smith says the cuts should be targeted at its lifestyle divisions. He wants resources re-directed towards investigations, news reporting and analysis.

"The newspapers can survive and find a market if they stop covering so much celebrity pap and food and wine. TV and radio do that so much better. They aren't going to be able to continue the traditional role of being a watchdog unless they get rid of most of the other stuff — all the lifestyle stuff," he said.

"They're introducing a paywall but to do that they have to have a product worth paying for. It's a big ask — so the product had better be good."

Former Herald Sun and The Age editor Bruce Guthrie tweeted this morning: "Fairfax cuts painful but overdue. Time for genuine innovation and editorial excellence. Let's hope there are enough journalists to do it."

[Stillwater]

The era of the blogger is upon us.... lots of people commenting on the news, but not enough people generating it.  That's why we now have journalists interviewing themselves (ABC's The Drum) instead of those with a story to tell, or not to tell, as the case maybe.  And I don't mean journalists running down the street, chasing some dodgy handyman, or sitting astride a motorbike trying to get a pic of Lady Di.

[ozbob]

Twitter

Brisbane Times ‏@brisbanetimes

We're also able to announce @BrisbaneTimes will not be moving to digital subscriptions in the foreseeable future. #Fairfax

[Fares_Fair]

Twitter

Brisbane Times ‏@brisbanetimes

We're also able to announce @BrisbaneTimes will not be moving to digital subscriptions in the foreseeable future. #Fairfax

Good News!

[Golliwog]

Not a news piece, but a good opinion piece on this topic by John Birmingham of BT.

It's a changing media landscape - and it's your fault
June 19, 2012 - 2:17PM

Opinion
Blunt Instrument
John Birmingham tells stories. Most of them true.

It was kind of dispiriting, but not surprising, yesterday to see the number of punters upset by news that The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald would change their publishing format from broadsheet to tabloid next year. It was as though they imagined that changing the shape of the paper would change the nature of the content it delivered.

The content is much more likely to be changed by the loss of hundreds of journalists who produce it, or a change in the ownership of the company, or the simple brute force metrics of the media's new, less "mediated" relationship with our readers.

What do I mean by that last? Simply that, although comment threads and letters to the editor bemoan the decline in standards of journalism, and cry out for more quality and care and less bias, most readers are less interested in hard news than they are in complete tosh. (I say that as somebody who makes a good living as the owner of a number of tosh factories.) A story about a celebrity wardrobe malfunction, especially if it comes with images, will totally bury an item of reportage about, say, hospital closures, or waterfront industrial action, or a review of defence policy or legislation for plain packaging on cigarettes.

The last item, for instance, is the subject of what will become, over the next 12 months, one of the most important, expensive and bitterly fought court cases in Australian history. It has already been, and will be reported internationally. But when it is reported here, or on any other Fairfax website, or for that matter on any of Rupert Murdoch's News Ltd sites, the stories will struggle to generate one-10th of 1 per cent of bugger-all of the traffic whipped up by, say, this week's bit of fluff about Miley Cyrus getting engaged.

The media isn't failing because it's not giving people what they want. We know exactly what you want, even if you don't care to admit it. Worthy but dull reporting of landmark health legislation? Not so much. Upskirt shots of Lindsay Lohan spilling out of a limo at The Viper Room? Not just yes, but hell yes!

We should probably also agree to avoid wasting our time in an #auspol style flame war over ideology. Different publishing houses will tend their preferred biases like a Zen Buddhist's pebble garden. The Fairfax report of a climate change story will be written and presented differently from a News Ltd report of the very same story, even if the facts are identical.

All media have biases and always have had them. But the biases don't necessarily lie at the heart of the collapsing business models and revenue streams of papers like The Sydney Morning Herald and The Australian. While there was some rejoicing and schadenfreude yesterday on Twitter and Facebook, with amateur commentators crowing that "nobody" wanted to read "anything" published by latte-sucking leftists like Fairfax, the assertion is demonstrably untrue. Just as it's untrue to say nobody likes watching Fox News or reading the editorial page of The Australian. Readers are naturally drawn to publications that reinforce rather than challenge their biases. But the biases, which have been baked in for decades, are largely irrelevant to the modern decline of the old news media.

Where, then, lies the cause of death for newspapers, not just here but all around the world, in the great cities, and the smallest towns?

There are some easy answers. The web, obviously. And some less easy ones. Fairfax has struggled for stability since the takeover frenzies of the 1980s. The Australian, unlike its tabloid stablemates, has never made a healthy profit as far as I know, and survives on the grace and favour of Lord Rupert.

But the web, the web, the web. Always we circle back to the web and the shock of the new. Not just in the way that digital technology allows bottom feeders like The Huffington Post to live as succubi on the work done by others, not just in the way that Google has disrupted if not destroyed the old media's traditional ad-based business model, and not just in the inability of old media practitioners to adjust to the demands of a new media environment. (Read your comment threads, people!) There are emergent cultural reasons as well.

One of the other announcements from Fairfax yesterday that drew more comments than the plan to reduce staff numbers by nearly 1900 (after all, how many people does it take to republish a Miley Cyrus story from TMZ.com?) was the announcement of a pay wall around the company's websites.

"You charge for online and you will be destroyed," commented "Tony" at 11.35am.

Tony has a point, but so does the person who tweeted his frustration with an "information wants to be free" neurosis which ignores the fact that media has always been hidden behind a paywall. Don't think so? Try walking down to your nearest newsagent, picking up a paper or a magazine, and walking out without paying. See what happens.

Of course, the web is not a newsagent. In media terms it's a cross between a jungle and a free-fire zone. While it is possible to make a profit selling media online - The New Yorker's iPad app, for instance, has delivered tens of thousands of new, digital-only subscribers to the magazine - it remains true that people will not pay for any old crap they can get anywhere else for free.

Nobody knows what the future holds for news media. It may well be that large, national dailies have no future. Smaller, hyper-local news services never lifting their gaze from what's happening within a few postcodes might thrive. Or they might not. Nobody knows.

Can blogs replace some of the reportage and analysis done by the old metropolitan media? Of course they can. If you can choose which of the hundreds of millions of blogs currently available to follow.

Will the world stop turning, will the skies rain down fiery poison toads on us all if old-school newspapers just go away? No, probably not.

But something will be lost. After all, it wasn't a blogger who broke the story of Craig Thomson and problems within the Health Services Union (although some bloggers are now pursuing it; I'd provide links except for the potential defamation costs at the other end of the click-through). It was a couple of Herald journalists working the phones, wearing down shoe leather, chasing a story that powerful interests wanted to keep quiet.

The Thomson scandal of course is now contested politically, with independent bloggers and main-stream outlets retailing their competing versions of the story (of which there are many) in line with those baked in biases we mentioned earlier. Perhaps another example then? Maybe Richard Baker's and Nick McKenzie's award winning coverage for The Age of the Reserve Bank holding back evidence of bribery. Or Joseph Catanzaro's Walkley Award winning investigation of the shameful treatment of Australian soldiers wounded in Afghanistan and Iraq? Or Nigel Hopkins' Adelaide Hills Magazine story exposing the internal working of the Inverbrackie Detention Centre.

Missed that one? Missed all of them?

Fair enough. I don't think TMZ.com has managed to cover those issues yet. Although rest assured there's some smokin' hot upskirt Lohan coverage comin' soon.

[ozbob]

Melbourne Age --> Why editorial independence must never be sacrificed

[ozbob]

Twitter

Brisbane Times ‏@brisbanetimes

More shock news for #Fairfax as top editors Paul Ramadge, Peter Fray and Amanda Wilson resign http://ow.ly/bNijb

==========================

Brisbanetimes --> Top Herald editors resign

[ozbob]

Brisbanetimes --> News Ltd to cut 70 digital staff

[ozbob]

From the Brisbanetimes click here!

Power of the press a lot less muscular than some imagine

Power of the press a lot less muscular than some imagine
June 26, 2012

There is delusion. And then there is self-delusion. When both forces come together, what follows is an absence of reality. This is evident in much of the debate about the future of the print media.

First, the delusion. Politicians tend to overestimate the importance of the media and, in particular, media proprietors. Take Australia, for example. At most, there are two elections in the modern era when the media probably had an impact on results.

In 1961 Sir Warwick Fairfax threw the support of the Herald behind Labor and its leader Arthur Calwell. In the event Sir Robert Menzies narrowly held on to government. But the Coalition lost seats in NSW and Queensland. The Herald's unexpected support for Labor would seem to have harmed the Coalition in NSW.
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Rupert Murdoch's strong support for Labor probably assisted Gough Whitlam in 1972 - due to the campaigning of The Australian nationally and The Daily Telegraph in NSW.

That's about it. The evidence indicates that, over the years, Murdoch has been more a follower than an initiator of political change. The same is true of Murdoch's political involvements in Britain and the US.

The problem is that many politicians became deluded about Murdoch's power. The British commentator Melvyn Bragg made this point when interviewed by Lateline's Emma Alberici in March. Lord Bragg's position was that the likes of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown "should have stood up" to Murdoch. When Alberici suggested that Murdoch had the power, Bragg responded that it was stupid of Blair and Brown to think that he did. In response to Alberici's reference to the claims by The Sun that it won the 1992 general election for John Major's Conservative Party, Bragg made the logical retort: "Why should we believe them?" The Conservatives would have won in 1992 without Murdoch's backing.

The truth is that media proprietors are just one of a number of players in the political landscape. Many politicians and journalists alike do not understand them. In April on ABC News Breakfast, shareholder activist Stephen Mayne described Murdoch as "the world's most powerful guy". This is a ludicrous exaggeration. If Murdoch was so powerful, he would not be appearing before the Leveson inquiry in Britain.

As to self-delusion, journalists frequently overestimate the significance of their own role. If the electorate followed the views of journalists, the republic referendum would have succeeded in 1999. I supported an Australian head of state but it seemed to me that the media's campaigning was counterproductive.

It's much the same at the moment. With some notable exceptions, journalists have led a cheer squad that urged Kevin Rudd and later Julia Gillard to introduce an emissions trading scheme or a carbon tax. The opinion polls indicate a significant disparity on this issue between majority journalistic opinion and the majority view in the suburbs and regional areas.

There is also a tendency for journalists to overestimate their role in facilitating the public debate. In recent times, ABC TV's Q&A gives the impression of campaigning to have Tony Abbott come on the program. The truth is that he does not need to.

In this overcrowded media market, journalists need politicians more than politicians need journalists. I always held the view that John Howard did too much media. The same criticism can be levelled at Rudd and Gillard.

Over the past week, many journalists have become obsessed with the prospect that Gina Rinehart might obtain two or more board seats at Fairfax Media and might choose to influence the company's editors. This is another example of proprietor-paranoia, while in the meantime there is little criticism of the recommendations by Ray Finkelstein, QC, to the Gillard government that editors who decline to abide by the arbitrary and incontestable decisions of his proposed News Media Council should be jailed.

This lack of self-awareness is perhaps greater within the ABC. Some ABC journalists express concern about the possibility of a lack of diversity within Fairfax Media under Rinehart's possible influence without recognising that the ABC does not have one conservative presenter for any of its significant programs. It has one presenter who boasts about his support for the left and another on the left who declares that she is an activist. Yet no conservatives, activist or otherwise.

The ABC managing director, Mark Scott, talks about the commercial media's "market failure". However, for the ABC, market success amounts to going to Canberra and getting a bucket-load of taxpayers' money.

Meanwhile the ABC's uninhibited move into online news and opinion projects a market distortion into attempts by Fairfax Media and News Limited to move more of their products online. Which suggests that the ABC is a much greater threat to the private sector media than Rinehart or any other potential investor.

Gerard Henderson is the executive director of the Sydney Institute.

Read more: http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/opinion/politics/power-of-the-press-a-lot-less-muscular-than-some-imagine-20120625-20yh4.html

[ozbob]

From the Melbourne Age click here!

Readers go and so does an editor

Readers go and so does an editor

July 7, 2012 Ian Munro and Chris Johnston

FALLING circulation and stagnant online readership were responsible for the resignation of Herald Sun editor Simon Pristel, media insiders said yesterday.

Weekday sales of the paper were reputedly down about 50,000 copies from the approximate 520,000 when Pristel was appointed and began taking the paper downmarket. Subscriptions to its website were described as disappointing.

Former Herald Sun business editor Stephen Mayne said its mass market news website lacked specialisation in everything except AFL coverage. Online, people were willing to pay for specialised journalism and analysis, whereas Herald Sun readers of ''modest means'' resisted paying for a locked-up product that was previously free.

He said that Pristel, was extraordinarily ambitious, but ''lacked the common touch that the master tabloid editors must have. He wanted a picture of a dog in the paper every day.''
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Pristel was replaced by Sunday Herald Sun editor Damon Johnston. His departure follows the return of former editor-in-chief Peter Blunden to editorial control following a restructure of the company's parent, News Ltd. Ironically, it was Blunden who appointed Pristel to the job almost four years ago. Blunden's appointment as managing director - editorial was announced last month.

A News Ltd staff member said the Herald Sun's shift downmarket under Pristel ''caused a lot of frustration here. Simon demanded respect because he was so professional, but there's not a lot of love [for him] here.''

Pristel's predecessor at the Herald Sun and a former editor of The Age, Bruce Guthrie, said the move appeared to be an attempt to reposition the paper in preparation for The Age adopting a tabloid format next year.

''Strategically, it's an important move. Pristel's departure will probably mean the Herald Sun will return to a mid-market position, which means that the new Fairfax tabloid will have less room to move into,'' Guthrie said. ''If, as I suspect, the Herald Sun returns to where I had it, which is mid-market, it probably makes the Fairfax task of taking readers off the paper a little more difficult.''

The turmoil at the top came after Pristel, just returned from holiday, was summoned to News' Sydney headquarters on Wednesday. Change had been in the wind after senior staff were called to meetings with editorial director Campbell Reid two weeks ago. ''If there's a big surprise, it's that he has left the organisation. He has been here his entire career,'' a staff member said of Pristel.

It came amid a furore over News Ltd's publication of the identity of a soldier killed in Afghanistan before it had been released officially.

In a letter to News boss Kim Williams, army chief Lieutenant-General David Morrison said the company's breach of established protocols had robbed the soldier's family of the right, initially to grieve in private.

''Such actions are unconscionable and un-Australian,'' General Morrison wrote. ''Our only concern is a desire to look after those of the grieving family of a courageous soldier. Their trust has been betrayed by the selfish act of a journalist intent on being 'the first'.''

Johnston said he saw the role of the Herald Sun to be one of a watchdog on institutions such as the courts and police. ''I think it is important to be the voice of Victoria,'' he said. ''I think it is important that we give voice to victims of crime ... We are there to entertain as well though.''

Mayne said Pristel had lost the support of Herald Sun heavyweights Terry McCrann and Andrew Bolt as well as losing the backing of his mentor, Blunden. ''A News Ltd editor must keep on side with the powerful company loyalists like McCrann and Bolt,'' Mayne said.

Another observer said: ''It's dropped a lot of circulation. We're also hearing that the web traffic has dried up since they put up the paywall.''

Pristel said after 23 years ''it is time for a new challenge''.

Read more: http://www.theage.com.au/national/readers-go-and-so-does-an-editor-20120706-21mot.html

... Another observer said: ''It's dropped a lot of circulation. We're also hearing that the web traffic has dried up since they put up the paywall.'' ...

[Fares_Fair]

checking rocket science handbook, p101 ...