Are the two most important custodians of editorial quality in Australia, The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age, financially robust enough to continue to fund the “public trust” journalism that is so pivotal to the democratic process?
The signs are disturbing. Last week, Fairfax CEO David Kirk revealed that The SMH and The Age contribute barely 20% of his company’s profits; the bulk now comes from country and suburban newspapers, agricultural publishing, internet trader ads, online dating and small contributions from The Financial Review, radio, internet news sites and printing.
This sounds like good news for Fairfax shareholders, whose exposure to systemically declining newspaper classified advertising revenues has been dramatically recalibrated in recent years. Fairfax is no longer a quality journalism company, it is a local newspaper/printing/online dating/internet trading ads company (although it still makes an estimated 84% of profits from print newspaper products).
But how will this corporate transformation affect the inherent subsidy from classified advertising profits that funds quality journalism? Are we just watching, as Kirk says, the broadsheets becoming a smaller part of a larger whole, or are we also watching two iconic Australian mastheads in sectoral decline?
According to the media analyst who has followed Fairfax as closely as any other in Australia — CCZ’s idiosyncratic Roger Colman — The SMH‘s annual profit has collapsed from $93 million to $61 million over the past three years, and The Age‘s profit has fallen from $69 million to $52 million in the same period. What’s worse, according to Colman, the Monday-to-Friday editions of the SMH and Age are increasingly moving into loss, with the classified-ad-funded Saturday editions contributing almost all the (declining) profits.
If they are accurate — and Fairfax never publicly reveals individual masthead profit figures — these are alarming figures for the future of Australian journalism.
And they raise the most poignant question of all: is the Fairfax board prepared to subsidise quality journalism from its other profitable activities as the classifieds migrate from newspapers — as the Washington Post, New York Times and London Guardian do — or will they attack editorial costs to prop up the evaporating SMH and Age profits?
The answer to that question is more relevant to the Future of Australian Journalism than a hundred thoughtful conferences or seminars.
The Herald has taken an increasingly tabloid tone and the website has gone even further down this route. The “Hey Mac” headline currently featured on the site is typical of the tabloid non-journalism it is going in for. You can see there is some desire to maintain quality journalism but neverthess the tabloid style is the most vigorously growing part of the operation. You have to wonder about the purpose of it all – presumably those who like tabloid hysterics and trivia will continue to buy the Telegraph and not migrate to the Herald. The quality journalism readership may migrate online to the New York Times and elsewhere, at least for international news, rather than wade through acres of tabloid crap.
Even though I have lived outside Sydney all my working life, and still life away from that ‘place’, I have read the SMH as my preferred news presenter and analysis since 1940. Sure, their are times when I have disagreed violently, almost felt like being involved in mayhem,;wrecking the offices and doing a ‘a la lanterne’ for the reporters, editorial writers etc.
Now I still have it delivered, but my routine after unwrapping it is as follows. Take out the page with the crosswords and comics, read the comics give the crosswords to the boss and then go on to read the news, the opinions and look at the cartoons. Apart from the last, as always very insightful and thought provoking, the rest continues my mood of ebullience. A sense of laughter, a delight in the ridiculous and trying to invent better ” punny” headlines keeps me happy for the rest of the day.
If not I turn to ABC news headlines and commentary! Watch out stand up comedians, you have serious competition from SMH and ABC.
It’s kind of ironic that someone who owns businesses that are desperately trying to take ad revenue out of Fairfax newpapers is so worried about the future of quality Fairfax journalism due to declining revenues.
Perhaps Beecher should stop having his team of Biz Spectator journalists do light re-writes of Fairfax articles and then posting them as if they were their own. Of course, quality journalism costs money. Crocodile tears are free.
Amusing that Buck should go with the croc analogy. Wasn’t Eric know in his heyday as “The Creature”, as in Eric “the Creature” Beecher?
Well I’ve warmed up to the Beech, or is that Beachhead. He was seriously engaged at the Future of Journalism conference and his figures there on Maxwell’s bid for the Age at $1b plus 20 years back v say $300 m value today echoes the above. It really is about survival of the 4th estate in a democracy. Blogocracy 5th estate is partly a reaction to that erosion, lost integrity, as well as maybe a cause. I’ve said before the answer to the question remains as for sterilising corrupt big party money politics – a business model based on the co operative or mutual for journalism, not advert profit as such. Because notwithstanding Beecher’s demonstrated concern for real news work, a corporation as per the documentary The Corporation is always a pathological profit machine – there is no moral space over time for nurturing and growing professionalism in such a chill ugly beast. My guess one can build chinese walls, and a pro news business culture in time of plenty, but not so much now