Big news yesterday was the announcement from Fairfax Media that it was culling 1900 staff, moving their broadsheets The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald to a tabloid format, closing two printing facilities in Melbourne and Sydney, and setting up a paywall for its online content.
In some circles the news has been massive, while in others its hardly raised an eyebrow. That’s the society we live in. Personally, I have a great interest in the media landscape so it was a news item that both surprised and left me pondering. So along with 1000 other bloggers and opinion writers who’ve written about it in the ensuing 24 hours, here’s my take on the whole thing.
Firstly, there’s no doubt the old newspaper business model is dying and there’s no chance of it being resuscitated. That’s not news, pardoning my pun. But the events of yesterday certainly legitimatise that view. The days of having a team of full-time reporters running around getting stories for you while paying them with the revenues from classifieds and advertising are long gone. The internet has changed all that as well as subscriptions to news services where you could possibly run a media service with no reporters of your own at all.
What that means for the future of investigative journalism is a big question though. What media proprietor is going to pay a seasoned reporter for six months of hard graft and worn out shoes from pounding the beat when the actual outcome in the form of a published article is so far off? Will the likes of Watergate ever happen again if there’s no appetite for delving in and exposing a story based on developing a relationship with a source and meticulous research and cross-checking?
The paywall is an interesting aspect as well. Again, it’s not a new thing with The New York Times first asking the public to pay for their online content a few years ago and the likes of The Australian and The Herald Sun following suit as local examples. The thing is, most people will not pay for something that they can get elsewhere for free. So a paywall will likely cause a decrease in readership but of course those who do pay up will result in an increase in revenue for the media outlet. And of course for the media companies it’s about the revenue so they’ll probably be happy to take that hit on readership numbers.
Then again, paywalls will no doubt be seen more and more over the coming years and we may well be in a situation soon where every media outlet charges and the balance of market share will return. The result? A win for the media outlets of course as they’ll have us paying for their content once again which in many ways is a mere reconstruction of the old business model where they had us paying for a hardcopy of the newspaper at our local newsagent. The more things change....
For me, I’m a regular user of The Brisbane Times, a Fairfax online news service, so I have some concerns about what yesterday’s announcement means for my access to it. It would appear odds-on that it’ll have a paywall soon so I’ll have an interesting dilemma when that time comes.
I currently use BT because I can’t stand The Courier Mail with all its sensationalism, dumbing down and focus on inconsequentials. That’s my own bias and point of view, and I happily admit it’s probably different to a lot of people, but I know for a fact that the CM has merely regurgitated a Government media release without any checking or questioning, whereas the BT article on the same thing actually did some research and analysis and questioned the slant the Minister/Government was trying to promote at the time.
Being a Fairfax entity, BT also has access to articles and opinion pieces from its sister publications such as The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald. For mine, the opinion pieces and engaged blogs on those two are great reading and always open my mind to new opinions and views or promote a greater scrutiny of an issue at hand. Far greater scrutiny than the CM provides that’s for sure. That's even if they do publish something on it rather than MasterChef or The Voice updates and articles congratulating themselves on their coverage or distribution results.
But the question remains, would I pay for access to BT? Geez, I really don’t know. I could get on my high horse and say of course I would, I'm all about high quality journalism and the costs be damned. But I have to be truthful that I might just go elsewhere the very moment it asks for my credit card details to read a particular article or opinion piece.
The change to a tabloid format isn’t much of an issue for me though. There was an old world view that broadsheets were quality while tabloids were populist but that demarcation is irrelevant now with digital media changing everything about formatting. It’s an issue for the old business model perhaps but as I’ve said earlier, that model is dead. And anyway, a tabloid is actually easier to read on the train.
Another interesting point about these decisions from Fairfax is that they coincide with a battle for control of its Board. Gina Rinehart, mining magnate and Australia’s richest woman, is wanting to be appointed Deputy Chairman of the company and have two other Board positions given to her ‘representatives’. As part of this move, Rinehart has told the rest of the Board that she and her reps will not be restricted on commenting on editorial matters, including the hiring and firing of editorial staff. This goes against the current Board protocol that Directors do not interfere in editorial matters.
This obviously raises some questions about editorial independence within a future Fairfax company and some worries about its entities becoming mere mouthpieces for Rinehart’s interests in particular and the mining industry in general.
And if you think that’s just me with my particular bias or slant on things, both the Government and the Opposition, in all its anti-carbon tax rage, have raised concerns about the moves and the risk that the likes of The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald could become ‘spokes-vehicles’ for the mining industry.
I mean, with all of Rinehart’s fortunes and all of her mining-related activities, why does she want to be involved in a media company anyway? Especially one whose own survival is requiring massive changes to its current business model. It can’t be for the profits and money-making that's for sure.
Yes, yesterday’s Fairfax announcement made for some interesting reading. I’m not sure what the media landscape will look like in a few months let alone a few years as a result. Particularly as News Limited is expected to announce its own massive changes in the not too distant future as well. The rumours swirl and all manner of speculation will continue.
As the Chinese proverb goes, “May you live in interesting times”.
EDM.
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