Will Fairfax Survive?

On Monday, 4^th March, 2013, two venerable Australian newspapers – The Melbourne Age (first published in 1854) and The Sydney Morning Herald (first published in 1831) - hit the streets in a new form.  As tabloids rather than broadsheets.

Shocking as this development has been for many rusted-on readers of these iconic Australian papers, there is nothing particularly new about this development.  In the U.K., The Independent ceased being a broadsheet in May, 2004, with the august Times and The Guardian following suit in 2005.  Here in Australia, most local newspapers (especially those in the News Limited stable) have taken the same path, driven largely by the economic imperative of maintaining their existence in a world increasingly dominated by electronic media. 

The problem for the Fairfax empire, which owns The Age and The S.M.H., has been the tension between its desire to maintain a respected intellectual presence within the Australian print media and its declining readerships and sliding advertising revenues.  Jonathon Holmes (“Media Watch”, ABC, Monday 4^th March, 2013) highlighted the problem when he revealed the 14.5% drop in weekday sales of The Age and The S.M.H. over the twelve months to December, 2012. 

Fairfax has certainly worked hard to sell its decision to a somewhat sceptical public.  The S.M.H. Editor-in-Chief, Sean Aylmer, has stated that the move to the “compact” format has been prompted by readers’ wishes for a more easily portable version of the newspaper and he has been quick to reassure the community that the standard of journalism in the new format will not change.  Whether this is a realistic prediction, however, remains to be seen.  The recent whole-sale sackings of hundreds of Fairfax staff, including many of its journalists, certainly leave room for doubt.

It has been argued that, irrespective of the fate of Fairfax's printed media (and some have predicted the demise of newspapers in general within five years), its presentation of news on other, less expensive, platforms will continue to earn the support and engagement of a public that is loyal and increasingly technologically savvy.  Time alone will tell if this argument is correct.  What is very clear, however, is that if good journalism is not maintained, neither the printed nor the electronic forms of the quality Fairfax news vehicles we know today will survive.