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At Fairfax, Misery Loves Company

Roger Franklin

May 09 2014

3 mins

fairfax chartYou may not have noticed, The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age being the sort of publications sensible people no longer read, but Fairfax Media’s journalists went all bolshie over the past few days and walked off the job. It was a display of curious logic: Its old media circulation and revenues are tanking, so why not chip away at what little remains by going on strike? At Fairfax, where CEO Greg Hywood takes home a reported $50,000 a week, it all makes as much sense as rewarding execs who have failed to reward shareholders.

How and why a once-sane media organisation reached such a state of addled misery is a question best left to corporate psychologists and other students of shared delusions – the fantasy in this instance being Fairfax editors’ fervent belief that the broader population subscribes to the same passions and monocular crusades as the cheap-to-hire twentysomething  women’s studies grads who now populate the organisation’s news rooms. If former readers…

Roger Franklin

Roger Franklin

Online Editor

Roger Franklin

Online Editor

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