This week, Fairfax staff across the country walked off the job for a weeklong strike after management revealed plans to lay off around 25% of the media company’s workforce to save $30 million.
Without putting too fine a point on it: this is what happens when you subtract labour from the journalism equation. I would go so far as to say that the actual journalists may be more important to creating a good newspaper than overcompensated management and executives. Crazy.
Today’s Sydney Morning Herald front page:
??ECOMOMY pic.twitter.com/OV05nUyNg1
— Sam Buckingham-Jones (@SamEBJones) May 4, 2017
Of course, this could be a frontpage editor or sub forced to remain on the job thanks to preexisting union agreements staging a fierce protest from within the walls of the castle. Either way. ECOMOMY.
(Full disclosure: we make no particular claim to occupy the high ground of the debate around typos and spelling errors in presented copy, as many of our commenters will no doubt be quick to point out. We no spell good. We no spell good.)
Whether intentional or not, it’s probably another sign for the top dogs at Fairfax: slashing journo jobs – whether industrial action is part of the equation or not – probably won’t result in a great product, at the end of the day.
Source: Sydney Morning Herald.
Photo: Sydney Morning Herald.
