Fairfax media’s outgoing chairman Roger Corbett says the company is committed to continuing its print newspapers, despite media reports to the contrary.
Speaking to the Fairfax-owned AFR Corbet says he can ‘categorically reassure (you) that we have no plans whatsoever to close down any of our newspapers, our major newspapers, at this stage’.
Corbett intimates that he believes rumours of Fairfax pulling out of print are emanating from rival News Ltd, but says ‘This is not going to happen’.
Fairfax Media closed down its two main metro printing plants, in Tullamarine and Chullora, in the last couple of years, with the board roundly criticised for even opening Tullamarine only a decade ago at a cost of $300m while at the same time completely missing the digital boat. The internet threat to the Fairfax rivers of gold classifieds was virtually ignored, allowing carsales.com.au, realestate.com.au and seek.com.au to thrive and take over the market.
Under current CEO Greg Hywood Fairfax is engaged in a digital first strategy, which has seen its newsrooms shredded to a fraction of their former selves, causing rising discontent with the printed product. Prior to the new strategy for instance one in-house sub would take care of one page per day, today subbing is outsourced with one sub looking after three pages, and on 60 per cent of the salary, with lower quality the inevitable result.
Print circulation continues to decline across the board for Fairfax printed titles. The total audience report by the publishers’ own reporting system Emma by the month for printed Fairfax newspapers from February 2014 to January 2015 saw declines of 205,000 from 2.52 million to 2.31 million or eight per cent for the Sydney Morning Herald, and a drop of ten per cent or some 184,000 readers from 1.79 million to 1.6 million for Melbourne’s The Age, compared to the previous year.
Several cities in the USA inlcuding San Francisco and Chicago have seen their major metro newspapers close down.
Fairfax is now looking at a merger with a TV company if the government presses on with its change to the cross media ownership laws.
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