It is hard to understand why it has taken Fairfax Media more than three months to make the trio of relatively tame board appointments that were announced quietly last Friday.
While the appointees are beyond reproach, as a group they do little to improve the situation. The board still lacks anybody with an inside understanding of journalism.
Given that quality journalism is Fairfax’s main “point of difference” in the crowded media marketplace, it is an extraordinary oversight. One more board place will be filled in the next few months, chairman Roger Corbett claims. We can only hope it will be filled by someone with editorial experience.
Remember Fairfax’s trouble of late last year? There was an acknowledgement by all concerned of an urgent need for renewal following the forced departure of chairman Ron Walker and his replacement by retailer Corbett.
So what is the result? Linda Nicholls, the corporate director from central casting, will head the board’s audit and risk committee. She has an unblemished record as a corporate adviser and director of leading companies, and of course she is female, and from Melbourne, which helps to balance the board.
But she is old generation rather than new generation, and her appointment hardly seems to be a response to the urgent strategic problems facing the company.
Sandra McPhee, formerly from Qantas, is also a well regarded career company director, and another woman. But it is hard to see anything in her background that suggests she will be able to tackle the enormous structural changes facing the industry.
New Zealand TradeMe founder Sam Morgan is the most exciting appointment. The rags-to-riches story of TradeMe’s founding and success is testimony to his smarts and entrepreneurial vigor. TradeMe has been one of Fairfax Media’s successful acquisitions. Morgan has new media understanding, but whether he is broad enough to contribute to solving Fairfax’s many problems remains to be seen.
And why has it taken so long? None of these people were exactly hiding under a rock. Two career directors, and Morgan, who would have been well known to Fairfax Media for a long time.
And why have people with directly relevant media experience, most notably Steve Harris, former publisher of The Age and also formerly editor in chief of both of Melbourne’s newspapers, so far been overlooked?
One more board position remains to be filled, but given that Harris has already offered himself to shareholders at the last AGM, one can assume that if he was going to be appointed it would have happened by now.
As it is, there is no evidence in these appointments that Fairfax is grappling with the need for innovation or making the necessary big shifts in strategic thinking.
It’s all a bit underwhelming. And I hope I am wrong.
* Declaration: Steve Harris is a board member of the Foundation for Public Interest Journalism at Swinburne University of Technology. I am the chair.
This is absurd. Please take a look at the boards of every major company you care to name. Identify in each case the specific industry experience represented on the board. And demonstrate why any of this commentary (above) should be taken seriously. Boards should choose good directors and actively avoid “managers”. (Take for example the glorious period of BHP when their board was dominated by execs and former execs – a disaster.)
It is also pathetic that you’re campaigning for a single director and one with no public company board experience. (In fact: any board experience?)
Fairfaxes trouble is that it is writing for and to a shrinking audience. Ok – 70% of readers read Miranda, or Richard, or Annabel, or Philip. The paper does nothing to further journalism. There is too much ‘lifestyle’, no serious politics (Phillip Coorey? really? Annabel Crabb? You must be joking…). the Sydney Morning Herald showed its true stupid populism with the publication of the classist, elitist, dumbed-down ‘leagues tables’. As a parent with children at a school at the bottome of the top half, we saw 3 parents pull their children out, thereby losing a teacher. The school was an excellent school with such a broad socio-economic base that NAPLAN was never going to be its strong point.
The stupid tabloid chases, the presence of ‘chef-journalism’, the columns of Danny Katz (?). None of these do the brand any good.
How does Fairfax fix itself: a non-editor (the last person needed, I think) gives his view: (All references to the newspaper are about the Sydney Morning Herald, unless otherwise stated)
1) Fairfax has the resources to be a true paper of record. Not a paper which will give you exactly what it is Adele Horin thinks. Get rid of op-eds (except maybe Ross Gittins and maybe Henderson or Coorey. I’m not sure Mike Carlon’s all he’s cracked up to be.) Put the others to work as journalists. If it beneath them, dump them.
2) Use your website smartly. Fairfax has reasonable websites – the future, despite not being what it used to be is now. If you have to dump the ‘paper’, do so.
3)Dump all of your reviewers. None of them are any good. Your rock reviewer for the SMH, Bernard Zuel, doesn’t like loud music. This is a little like putting on a fiction reviewer who doesn’t like novels: you don’t have to like everything, but an understanding helps, and dismissing a band because it was ‘too loud’ or because ‘I didn’t get front row seats’ is not criticism.
4) Better selecion of letters to the editors: they are fair, yes. But to see complaints about modern microwaves, obvious party trolls, and ill-considered rants (ahem..) published is depressing, and not the point of a letters page. (Certainly, letters don’t need to be ‘on-topic’, but interest and intelligence should be cornerstones…)
5) Cities are not just the wealthier areas. the SMH rarely heads west of Strathfield. The Age is rarely seen in Frankston, or Glen Waverley. You might be one of Australia’s oldest companies. No one cares. They care about what’s happening in their city. Not just the wealthy or boho areas. All of it.
6) Too much unfunny comedy. The Good Weekend has run its course a long time ago. Column 8 is really a running discussion between no-one and a few hangers on…
7) Write really, really, really, really, well. Not the University Undergrad for the Student Paper style that is currently popular. Engage with your ideas. Develop your ideas. Be creative (in your descriptions, not your facts)
8) Provide a quality product. People will buy it.
9) Stop pretending that you have any say in elections. Report politics. Stop trying to influence it. The press gallery is a poisonous, parochial, information killing area. Go back to point (1) for further development of this point.
10) Be proud of your product. Really proud. Make it the best journalism output, not just in Australia (which, let’s face it, isn’t hard – Crikey being your only real threat), but the world. US papers which have survived are, in general, the very best. European papers are the same. Go for them. Forget about circulations and income. Fix the product, and those will be fixed.
The little chap with sunglasses is supposed to be # 8 …
Fairfax’s innumerable problems stem from their editorial lurch to the extreme Left.
Agenda-driven and nauseating fact-free pablum from various op-eds also made for dull reading.
Reconstructing endless government press releases only accelerated its demise and highlighted the glaring dearth of journalistic integrity embedded in its newsroom.
The final death knell has been a dogged pursuit of inner-city ABs, so much so to the point where they couldn’t even give it away (the latest attempt was 15 weeks free M-F +S/S home delivered AND a copy of the latest GFG)…still not compelling enough.
If Fairfax seriously wants to compete amidst new (& alternate) media sources and shortened reader attention spans, it needs a top-to-bottom rout of its current business.
Alternately, it could ask for a hand-out from the government.
Everyone else is.