Media
END OF DAILIES: Big Fairfax shareholder wants to dump The Age & Sydney Morning Herald
Deutsche warned that extracting that value would be no mean feat though, suggesting to us the share price might fall even lower.
The misery and frustration of it has the previously silent, large Fairfax investor publicly saying the previously unthinkable, even suggesting a spin-off of the troubled Sydney Morning Herald and The Age:
“Perhaps you need to look at the metro papers in a different light. Make them stand or fall by themselves.”
MONDAY UPDATE:
Sure enough, Fairfax have announced massive cuts to its staff today.
VEXNEWS understands that as many as half of the editorial staff at The Age and Sydney Morning Herald will go.
It is also considered inevitable that there will be industrial action as various issues like redundancies are resolved.
The announcement makes it clear enough that the two metropolitan newspapers will not be printed for much longer. The Sydney/Melbourne metro printing presses will close, with the regional printing presses, will clearly not be a long term viable option. Equally difficult will be transitioning their considerable online audience into paying for the product. We hear News Limited’s experiments with that have not been especially rewarding.
No new owner, no sensible shareholder will be pleased with any of this very slow approach to dealing with loss-making enterprises. There are profitable, strongly viable parts of Fairfax that are being imperilled by the insistence of its nostalgic management on propping up the loss-making newspapers.
Many journalists feel very squeamish about even discussing this, for a variety of sentimental or self-interested reasons.
The Financial Review itself – a viable newspaper that has been revitalised by its new editor – openly canvassed the complete closure of these publications over the weekend, much to our surprise. It’s a debate many shareholders, including the biggest one Gina Rinehart, will want to have. Is the company worth more dead than alive?
As it turns out, the Fin was ahead of the game, perhaps aware what the Fairfax CEO had planned for today.
We note with interest Communications Minister Steve Conroy being asked this morning about the prospect of taxpayer/state subsidy for ailing print publications of the Fairfax kind. He ruled it out. A shame really, as we’d be the first to put up our hands for at least $50 million per annum to feed the half-starved, ready-to-roll VEXNEWS Investigations Unit who are only accustomed to being paid by KFC, and even then, we can be slow in discharging our fried chicken obligations to our hard-working crew.
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Graph looks the same as the ALP’s primary vote.
the death of Fairfax can’t come soon enough. They have been at the forefront of the destruction of Australian culture and prosperity. I wonder how many of their journalists are among the 50,000 parasites currently sipping on Pina Coladas at the Rio20+ ‘sustainable development’ conference. scum of the earth, every one of them
Not the end of dailies.
Just the end of Fairfax dailies.
Decent quality newspapers like News Ltd publications will have a much better fate.
oMG the end of al, age and SMH ( Syrian Morning Herald)
Who will represent the Islamic community and act as their
Advocates, more important without these two
Rags who will be bagging Israel on a daily basis ?
‘Quality newspapers like News Ltd publicationas’? You jest, surely? The most bigoted, biased, untruthful, misleading, nondescript, peurile, self-obsessed trash that I have the good fortune to have stopped reading — forever!
Deknarf I agree with you and your description 100% ,I stopped buying AGe, SMH, Canberra Times and Fin Review years ago!
If Al ‘Age closed down where would Palestinian activist Maher Muhgrabi come AGE Foreign Affairs Editor and Staff writer come Islamic Community advocate Walleed Aly Go ?
What a strange and bigoted set of comments.
Don’t worry Michael.
Terrorist apologists will still have Adrian Jackson farting off somewhere or other
It’s amazing that anyone reads them anymore, to do so is surely a sign of some sort of derangement.
It’s a pity the ABC is government funded or else it would have gone first.
What will happen to Michelle & Caroline, Flannery & Pilger, Malcolm & Marr, Walleed & Maher?
Like all union-run businesses the Fairfax dailies are now close to being admitted to respite.
Hey Chris … I object to you saying that every one of Fairfax journalists is scum.
I won’t have it!
Paul Sheehan is worth reading.
They say every picture is worth 1,000 words.
That graph says “we’re fucked” x 500
Can’t wait for the end of days on Spencer St.
Try to give us advance warning so I can get a family size box of popcorn and go down there and laugh my guts out watching all the turds being flushed down the Spencer St gutter.
Toad, I concede that Paul Sheehan is worth reading. He is the only person at Fairfax who has ever spoken up against the discrimination that boys now face in education system due to exams having been replaced with ‘do at home’ coursework.
So Chris … I think we are in agreement.
Paul Sheehan is a good read.
The other 99.9% of Fairfax (alleged) journalists are five-star rolled-gold Olympic standard fuckwits.
Paul Sheehan is a right wing hack.
Word
The Australian Jewish News is struggling too. No letter on line no comments from bloggers about articles; it very lean.
According to that Graph Vexnews caused the Global Financial Crisis.
Is Vexnews is an astroturfing Occupy setup?
You couldn’t invent this stuff, it’s way better value than Crikey for a good belly laugh!
Geez, the stackers and whackers are onto a good wicket with the East Coast economy turning onto a warehouse. Yer dad’d be proud of yer Andrew!
Id Tony Sheldon ever turns up here with his sideburns, which is a matter of conjecture, I’ll sit him next to B.A. Santamaria.
Joy o’ Joy !!
All those dyed in the wool leftie journo’s will be looking for a job but the ABC is full up.
To earn a living they might just have to grow a discerning brain; a questioning brain;a non-opinionated only leftie brain; and especially a non-group think brain.
Fairfax must survive – just so I can sue The Age.
Well, Vex has come of age – you now have the Liberal party PR stooges watching the site & trolling the article comments.
the only troll here is you. We know that the Libs are just as incompetent and corrupt as the ALP, and God knows that is saying something.
The liberals have been watching vexnews for years – vex is the loose lips of the labor party.
If I ever get served a Big Mac and fries by David Marr at the spencer st. McDonalds, I will know that all is right in the world
Probably beyond David Marr’s limited ability to get meat between two buns …. although I could be wrong.
I love a slow motion train crash. This one is going to be a corker!
Yes, I can confirm that I know that’s saying something.
850 journalist jobs to go. Even Comrade Stalin would be proud of that purge.
So a state of 5.5 million people will have only 1 local daily newspaper?
Rupert Murdoch might be on the nose in the UK but rising in power in Victoria.
The rot set in when that Sydney wanker Warwick Fairfax bought The Age. Before that The Age was one of the best papers in the world under the Syme Family.
Perhaps Fairfax, will merge into Al Jazeera where it belongs
While many are saying that this is purely due to new technology and changing business models, lets not forget the impact of The Age repeatedly lying to its readers.
For example the Channel Deepening controversy – Age readers were led into thinking the world was going to end with successive front page stories.
Years later and everything seems to be ok with the bay…
You reap what you sow.
The Age should keep good and at reporters like L. Money and M. Grattan but they should “shed” reporters like C. Webb and S. Carbone.
The SMH should have been renamed The Eastern Sydney Hermit a long time ago, for the sake of relevance. It’s more like a print edition of Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous; I always imagine Robin Leach’s voice when I read the verticals. Seriously, who the fuck needs to know about $5+ million houses or a test drive of the latest Porsche Panamera?
It’s so out of touch it makes Clive Palmer sound reasonable some of the time.
sellout, don’t sweat. Victoria has a population of six million. According to News Ltd 400,000 of them buy the Herald Sun. Others claim that figure is probably a fair bit less with giveaways and creative accounting. If they stopped covering the AFL their circulation would fall to something around 0. That’s why people buy the Hun.
Rest assured my friend that smartphones and google are changing the lives of us blue-collar workers, and not just for looking at porn! No one takes the Hun seriously like they did even five years ago. I don’t think News is in a position to shift one lousy vote anymore, especially as the big political story in lunchrooms is how deep that jackson biatch had her hand in the till – and no one from the big papers is covering that! But it’s all over facebook.
Stick a fork in their arse and turn them over, they’re done.
@ God | June 19, 2012, 16:03
You need your own blog. I like you, smart, witty, switched on. Love the little witticisms like the one on the end of this post. Blue Collar + Smart = Very Sexy.
woah.. creep on creepin’ on Anon
why would anyone place credibility in what Deutsche Bank wants?.
They supported the current board who have shown what a bunch of useless dills they are and who have driven down the price.
Where were Deutsche when this was happening?
Perhaps Roger The Grocer could implement a POKIES bonanza like he did at Woolies