Media
THE AGE: Running late for its own wake
If you didn’t get your copy of The Age yesterday (Tuesday 19th January) you weren’t the only one.
Industry sources confirmed a short time ago that The Age’s Tullamarine production plant suffered a major meltdown at a key moment during yesterday’s print run and the problem took more than 5 hours to be rectified.
For The Age’s loyal customers, yesterday was pretty much a non-event, as the paper did not arrive in newsagents until late morning, and therefore, in the case of most home delivery customers, it did not arrive at all.
Our sources have told us that it isn’t the first time The Age’s massively expensive but woefully under-utilised printing presses have shat themselves recently.
Perhaps it’s the pressure of having to pump out such consistently bilious drivel that is finally taking its toll on the German manufactured precision machinery.
Nonetheless, by the time The Age was on the street, 5 hours behind schedule, the damage had been done. At our local newsagent, the Herald Sun had already sold out by 9am and we had to go a little further down the street to our local supermarket to get our hands on one of the few remaining copies.
Which all suggests to us that our friends at Team Murdoch may well have had a very good day as a consequence of Fairfax’s woes. The good news for Age readers is that if you were lucky enough to get your hands on a copy of The Age for Tuesday 19 January 2010, hang on to it – it will be a collector’s item. We are reliably informed that barely more than 130,000 copies in all were distributed which is probably the lowest circulaton number on record for the bombastic broadsheet.
We anxiously await an explanation for the printing press meltdown. We don’t believe industrial action was to blame this time. Maybe they all just fell asleep down at the plant. That’s what reading The Age will do to you…
Discussion
13 comments for “THE AGE: Running late for its own wake”
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Pity it didn’t happen to the HUN
Pity it doesn’t happen on a permanent basis to the Age,but then again,watching the slow ,painful and inevitable death of this sad excuse for a “quality” newspaper does provide a certain pleasure.
Agree with Argus on this one. Both of them could die and I couldn’t give two shits.
I was wondering why my paper arrived so late.
I had to read the Australian yesterday with my organic meusli with organic grain fed goats milk.
I almost choked reading, it was full of all this right wing drivel!
The high number of comments on this issue demonstrates just how integral a daily dose of the AGE is to the mental well-being of Melbourne’s citizens.
More Aged amusement – from my office I look directly at its new building (surely to soon have a giant For Lease sign on it). On the front of said building is a giant screen that first spluttered to life just after the building was finished and showed, for about 10 days, a montage of images of the building being completed. It then shut off and has been dormant ever since.
They have so much excess capacity at their Tullamarine printing plant that each night they go “eeny meeny miney mo” to decide which press to use for the next day’s edition. Obviously they chose the wrong one the other night. Whoever made the decision to build such a big plant for such a small paper has saddled Fairfax with a total white elephant.
That new building in Spencer Street is another white elephant. Fairfax has gone from a fully paid-off building at 250 Spencer St to renting a badly ventilated, long, narrow, hot and impractical shoe-box that has added $6 million a year to Fairfax’s expense line. GENIUS!
While I wouldn’t waste money on the age, I felt for my chinese milk bar owner as commuters seeking out the sporting news fix did not patron him with any impulse purchases.
Yet another example of the Age’s hypocrocy: if the train’s broke down for five hours, they would be all over the story, yet when their equipment brakes down, there’s not a boo from them. The Age acutely suffers from a lack of self reflection in its reporting and, in that sense Andrew, I agree with you that it’s a basket case.
The problem with the Age is that it can dish out the criticism but it can’t take it.
I hope that once The Age is gone that people will remember its proud history and not these undignified dying years.
Great to have you back Andrew. The Age is a shit newspaper. Their coverage of the whole Brimbank/Ombudsman saga was the biggest whitewash ever. Where was the scandal ? Up their arses.