Since last week’s release of Pamela Williams’ book Killing Fairfax, the media and blogosphere has been abuzz with opinions, views and predictions. In this week's ReVerb, Andy McCourt gathers together a lineup of the likely suspects behind the publisher's perceived demise.
In the wake of the release of Killing Fairfax, The Australian newspaper went as far as to say that Fairfax would, by 2015, cease printing its Monday to Friday editions of The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald (SMH) altogether – an assertion that was scathingly rebutted by Fairfax CEO Greg Hywood in a rather grandiose old fashioned ‘thunderer’ editorial; not once but twice in the weekend and Wednesday editions. Maybe all he needed to write was: “Well they would say that wouldn’t they?”
The 330 printers and staff at Chullora and Tullamarine are already on death row job-wise. Fairfax has openly stated that these print supersites will close by mid 2014. Hopefully, some will find employment within the remaining printeries such as Ballarat, Richmond and Newcastle but with 1,900 Fairfax Media redundancies by 2014 announced last year, the signs are not good. Tullamarine opened in 2003 and Fairfax now depreciates its presses over 10 years useful life, so the heavy metal owes them nothing.
Killing Fairfax may be a sensationalist, celeb name-dropping take on the situation but it is well researched and crafted by Williams; who is ironically a Fairfax employee and was granted a six-month sabbatical to write the book. The whacky world of media whoredom is further illustrated in that a Murdoch company – Harper Collins – published the book. Howzat? Another book by a former Walkley-winning Fairfax editor Colleen Ryan, The Rise and Fall of Fairfax, was released on July 1st by Melbourne University Press and is a less sensationalist account and therefore drew less publicity than the ‘A’ list name-backed version.
What is of more concern to our printing industry is that the once-mightiest and longest-established media empire in Australia and New Zealand is under the microscope for potentially abandoning print – denied of course by the Board and even majority shareholder Gina Rinehart reinforced this saying: ‘as long as it makes commercial sense,’ Fairfax would keep printing newspapers.
There’s no need for verbs intransitive; the ‘old’ Fairfax is actually dead. The last director-shareholder with the family name, John B Fairfax, made a sour exit in late 2011, selling out and losing around $900 million in the process for his family company Marinya Media. The last Fairfax on the board, JB’s son Nicholas, resigned in November 2011. So, with the motto “Fairfax is dead, long live Fairfax,” here is a list of possible suspects for the homicide, presented in ‘whodunnit’ fashion.
James Packer and Lachlan Murdoch: these two likely lads as much as confessed at the book launch but may have been verballed. “I think we killed Fairfax,” Packer allegedly said. “We did” said Murdoch and they were seen toasting to this. Forensics point to the Packer-Murdoch weapons of seek.com, realestate.com and carsales.com as causing mass hemorrhages from Fairfax’s rivers-of-gold classified advertising. Further investigations reveal long-held animosities stemming from stories published in Fairfax titles about their Dads. Seems they regard the Fairfaxes as stuck-up silvertail parvenus. They, of course, are your everyday likeable larrikin billionaires. Verballed but not guilty.
Gina Rinehart: Galled at Fairfax journalists’ probing and publishing of her family matters, Rinehart first tried to stop it through litigation, (bad move with the media) and then started buying shares. Her ally ‘Hungry’ Jack Cowin won a seat on the board and she now sits at just under the 19.99% ownership that would trigger a an automatic take-over offer. Six years earlier, Fairfax was worth 20 times Rinehart’s nett worth. Today, the world’s richest lady could afford thirty Fairfaxes as it is now valued below $1 billion. The sad part is that this is apparently a case of a very wealthy mining person buying into a media group, not for a good investment or love of newspapers, but to shut up, or get rid of, journalists for revealing the truth. Is this what our forebears fought for? She and Cowin could mince up Fairfax and make burgers out of it, then sell off the scraps and it would not matter one jot to them. Definitely one in the frame.
Warwick Fairfax Jnr: The unfortunate Warwick Jnr. Took over the Fairfax crown jewels in 1987 and promptly set about re-privatising the listed company. Unfortunately his ‘banker’ was ‘last resort’ Laurie Connell’s Rothwells which went belly-up in the crash of ’87…eventually followed by John Fairfax’s receivership in 1990 when Warwick’s takeover vehicle Tryart could not meet its debt obligations. Canadian Conrad Black cobbled together a consortium – Tourang - and bought Fairfax out of administration in 1992. This was the first death and resurrection of Fairfax and young Warwick certainly has to shoulder some blame, but he has been out of the picture in the USA since 1991, away from the Killing Fields.
Journalists: Journalists?? Sorry to say, but the very people who have made Fairfax newspapers so great over the years have contributed to the Killing. When David Kirk ran the company, he wanted to take The Age and SMH tabloid. ‘Over our dead bodies’ cried the avant-garde journos; and they eventually got their wish. The line sold to the public was that the presses could not produce tabloids (why can they now?) but I have from reliable inside editorial sources, that the journo lobby would not tolerate a reduction in editorial space from broadsheet luxury.
Their power was drawn from the infamous ‘Editorial Independence Charter’ written in 1991 by then Chairman Sir Zelman Cowen, that Rinehart has consistently refused to ratify – in other words leave the door open for interference in editorial matters. However, the journos’ fear of ‘tabloidism’ was irrational and would have still been subject to the Charter had The Age and SMH gone ‘compact’ years ago. Didn’t they realise that it is advertising that pays for running newspapers?
News Corp: News has outfoxed Fairfax at almost every turn for the past 30 years. News Corp prints papers that more people buy, went to paywalls for online/mobile content way before Fairfax and has more efficient production sites, best illustrated when the Brisbane Courier Mail went from broadsheet to tabloid in 2006, it was accomplished seamlessly, reduced costs and increased circulation. Even in Fairfax's core metro territories of Melbourne and Sydney, News Corp titles outsell The Age and SMH by a country mile. There are only two national dailies in Australia and The Australian outsells the Financial Review almost twofold.
News Corp also has the suburban community freesheet markets by the short ‘n curlies. Free mX commuter newspapers have also succeeded where Fairfax failed. News Corp Australia prints, sells and distributes over 17 million newspapers every week. Maybe News’ success could be put down to the fact it is run by people who really know newspapers and their communities; just maybe.
Technology: Are the iPad, iPhone, online services and social media to blame for killing Fairfax? Hardly; Fairfax is into all these platforms and its websites attract more visitors than even News Corp’s (pre-paywall). Blaming technology is a cop-out; a media organisation’s job is to reach audiences and attract advertisers while delivering content that people want. Profits should follow if good management, vision and execution are in place. Not guilty.
Successive boards: Since Sir Warwick Fairfax died, the boards and CEOs of his company have chopped and changed, appointed publishing-illiterate CEOs, failed to have long-term plans, ignored warning signs of public media tastes, shunned technology until dragged kicking and screaming into it (or executed it woefully-remember f2 online?) and fought with each other. Alan Kohler, a former Fairfax editor, put it most succinctly at the launch of Killing Fairfax: “It’s the main job of a board to ‘smell the smoke coming under the door’….The Fairfax board couldn't even see each other for the smoke - and they still couldn't smell it." I can’t beat that…a serious case for the prosecution.
I dunnit: Privilege: this is not a confession. But I did cancel my home delivery of the SMH. Not that I didn’t like the paper; I do but I got fed up of retrieving a soggy glad-wrapped tube from the wet grass. Even glad-wrap can’t protect a newspaper in a Sydney downpour. The wrapping itself was frequently unfathomable, requiring a chain-saw to get it off. The remains of the newspaper were then so curled up they required a ten-ton drop hammer to flatten them out. Contributory manslaughter, maybe, but I plead insanity, triggered by frustration.
We all dunnit: You, me, society, GenX, Y and Z and the butler. Our tastes and desires in media have changed. Not enough of us want the much-vaunted ‘quality’ Fairfax type of journalism and we don’t buy enough newspapers or subscribe to e-versions anymore. The core product -news – is available instantly in our pockets via smartphones and the more serious commentary or investigative stuff is shunned for: ‘Kim’s mummy-tummy gone as she frolics with Kanye in a barely-there bikini.’ Ho-hum; bet Kanye looks daft in that. Moreover, we decided to look for new jobs, houses, cars and relationships online; we want the well-written pieces but we want them for free. Fairfax is sooo-Twentieth Century and we are über-cool urbanite 21st Century know-alls who don’t need smart-alecky publications to inform us about this and that. We want to know who wins the X-Factor and The Block; how to lose weight and who is dating who.
We are all in ‘the frame’ for killing Fairfax; some more than others but the fundamental rule applies, as it always has: adapt, change and act or die out.
For Fairfax Media, especially the printers, I hope it is not too late.