The Top 5 Post-Fairfax & News Ltd Career Options For The Soon-To-Be-Unemployed


Around midday today News Ltd announced that it would streamline its east coast divisions from nineteen to five (“what a way to make a livin‘”) in a major restructuring of its eastern seaboard operations.

Streamlining‘ is perhaps one of the more pleasant euphemisms for ‘insane job cuts‘, and although significant, staff losses at News will reportedly pale in comparison to the 1900 axed by Fairfax on Monday – or so the God-willing writer from The Australian says. Mumbrella points out that because News isn’t publicly listed on the Australian Stock Exchange, it’s not obliged to reveal just how many jobs will be cut, and CEO Kim Williams has declined to comment any further on the issue. Regardless, in the next eighteen to twenty-four months, fourteen divisions of will lose hundreds of staff, taking the Australian news media body count into the two-thousands, and that means hundreds of redundant journalists, printing press operators and other miscellaneous staff (who else works at newspapers?) are going to need alternative career options in this post-Fairfax, post-News, post-streamlined landscape.

And because they’re all likely to read this while searching desperately for commentary on this much under-reported issue on Twitter, we thought it best to compile a list of The Top 5 Post-Fairfax & News Ltd Career Options For The Soon-To-Be-Unemployed, including but not (news!) limited to the following:

1. Drug/medical/product testing

Depending on the trial you participate in, being a human guinea pig can earn you any from from $100 up to $300. However, some clinical medical trials won’t pay you for your time and that depends on whether or not you’re in the control or intervention groups, so you’d be best advised to lock in an appearance fee before you undertake something like the Asia-Pacific Flexible Dose Study of Dapoxetine and Patient Satisfaction in Premature Ejaculation Therapy, Testosterone Levels and Weight Loss. That’s probably a good one too because you’re guaranteed to do the deed twice weekly in the name of science and lose weight.

Product testing and development companies will often pay anywhere from $80 – $100 for two hours of your time, which more often than not will involve drinking or eating something, or putting on moisturiser. There’s a limit to how often you can participate with certain companies, so spread yourself around and don’t get so excited at the prospect of free food and cosmetics that you throw up your as yet unnamed energy drink all over those baby-soft hands.

You’ll need: time, wits and a pre-existing medical condition – which you will no doubt develop from your recently being made cripplingly redundant!

Potential cash flow: At least $80. Fortnightly. This could be you:

Photo by Justin Sullivan via Getty

2. Volunteer (your time and other things)

What is it they say about getting the most out of what you give? Something like that. Volunteering your time and services is a great way to give back to the community from whence you came (apparently). You will not, however, receive any renumeration for any time or fluids you donate in the process, but you could potentially save/create a life so don’t let that stop you.

You’ll need: To get your creative juices/blood flowing.

Potential cash flow: $0, redeemable for karma points – because that’s how karma works, right?

3. Mine Iron Ore

It worked for Lang Hancock, and it’s certainly working for his mining Midas daughter, Gina Rinehart. Once you’ve struck iron and achieved the equivalent wealth of Gina The Hutt, you’ll be able to eliminate world hunger or buy a year’s worth of the drug AZT for 9,657,000 of the approximately 34,000,000 HIV-infected people in the world. Or you can buy back Fairfax.

So much $$$ in this photo by Paul Kane for Getty

You’ll need: A pick-axe. Alternatively you could cut out the middle iron man and pull a Rose Porteous, in which case you’ll need your seductive wiles and your best game face (see below). Like Porteous, you’re going to have to dig deep.

Rose Portential cash flow: $29.17 billion.

Photo by Paul Riviere via Getty

4. Suffer For Your Art

You’re more than likely a writer who has found themselves without an audience and without any incoming cash flow for your words and opinions. Get off Twitter, sign up for unemployment benefits, live and die ‘like Flaubert in a garret’ or write a posthumously published Miles Franklin Award winning memoir that sees you rise like the glorious phoenix you are from the ashes of your redundancy! You don’t even need to be alive to see it; in fact, it’s probably better if you’re not – Stieg Larsson style. People will remember your name forever, not your #’s.

You’ll need: an idea, venereal/heart disease.

Potential cash flow: for your grateful next of kin.

5. Intern

Don’t be dismayed, there’s nothing wrong with starting from the ground up – at least, I think that’s what Aaliyah was talking about. There’s an ugly duckling makeover montage out there just waiting for you.

6. SURPRISE BONUS

Pedestrian Jobs. You are welcome!

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