|
September 18, 2009
So Fairfax is involved in a power dispute between the Fairfax family and Ron Walker, the Chairman of the Board of Directors. Fairfax, which was once an Australian publishing institution that stood for quality journalism, has become just another media company.
Walker will go sooner rather than latter. A board room change--new blood and talent in the boardroom--- still leaves this media company under the management of Brian McCarthy from Rural Press, having little idea about future of newspapers or funding quality journalism in a digital world. In fact this management team gives the appearance of denying the crisis they are facing other than keeping on cost cutting. That is a one way track to a cul de sac.
As Stephen Bartholomeusz in Business Spectator observes:
The old core of Fairfax, its metropolitan newspapers, and its two big broadsheets in particular, are imploding as cyclical and structural forces have converged. No-one expects the classified advertising volumes and yields to return to their pre-crisis levels.While the Walker acquisition spree has provided diversification into less competitive and vulnerable media segments, that’s an issue of degree rather than direction. Fairfax has yet to devise a strategy or asset base that will allow it to grow while the old media declines, and both the capital it has raised and the structural issues it confronts will dampen its traditional leverage to economic recovery.
Such a strategy in an industry that is undergoing deep seated structural change outside the control of any management involves Fairfax having to reinvent itself.
Margot Simons in Crikey says that:
The real potential of the Rural Press-Fairfax merger was that it made Fairfax the only media organisation in the country -- with the exception of the ABC -- with depth of journalistic talent and real presence in rural and regional Australia. Fairfax had a unique opportunity. But the approach to Rural Press was mistaken. Fairfax understood that it had to diversify from its metropolitan print mastheads, but it thought that rural papers would continue to do well. In fact, the opportunity was about content and community, not about gaining more print assets. The trick was to invest in the content and the community, while getting away from dependence on the print platform. That was never understood.
If one wants to look at what regional and local presence combined with depth of talent might mean in the new media age, one only has to look at the ABC, where localism, social networking and the building of communities is a central part of the vision for justifying publically funded media in the new age.
|
