{"id":411,"date":"2007-05-11T15:31:08","date_gmt":"2007-05-11T04:31:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/machinegunkeyboard.com\/?p=411"},"modified":"2007-05-15T07:29:21","modified_gmt":"2007-05-14T20:29:21","slug":"unfairfax","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/machinegunkeyboard.com\/?p=411","title":{"rendered":"unFairfax!"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/machinegunkeyboard.com\/blogimages\/smh_journos_on_strike.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center\"><a href=\"http:\/\/machinegunkeyboard.com\/blogimages\/smh_journos_on_strike.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/machinegunkeyboard.com\/blogimages\/smh_journos_on_strike.jpg\" title=\"SMH out on the grass!\" alt=\"SMH out on the grass!\" border=\"0\" height=\"230\" width=\"400\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>The Fairfax papers are simply the best in Australia. The SMH and The Age are very fine old papers, trying to have a go in a new century. However, someone over at Fairfax has decided that for a paper to be commercially successful in the modern media mix, it has to cost next to nothing to run. In pursuit of &#8216;productivity,&#8217; <a href=\"http:\/\/www.smh.com.au\/articles\/2007\/05\/09\/1178390389617.html\">Fairfax wants to lop 35 workers<\/a> out of the SMH and Sun Herald staffs and make existing workers cover their duties.<!--more--><\/p>\n<p>Hate to break it to them, but the reason the SMH and The Age are such good papers is because they have good journos and production staff. Labour is not a commodity- the increased &#8216;productivity&#8217; happy smoke that HoWARd and Rudd are blowing up our collective arses at the moment comes at a cost- to workers&#8217; families. When you try to get one journo to write two newspapers, something, somewhere is going to break. Whether that&#8217;s an increase in <a href=\"http:\/\/www.smh.com.au\/news\/fashion\/guards-stop-impromptu-illegal-show\/2007\/05\/01\/1177788107067.html\">absurd fluff pieces<\/a> or <a href=\"http:\/\/www.abc.net.au\/mediawatch\/transcripts\/s1910529.htm\">getting caught out<\/a> <a href=\"http:\/\/www.smh.com.au\/news\/world\/japanese-actress-baffled-by-sheepdog-scam\/2007\/04\/27\/1177459927942.html\">republishing urban myths,<\/a> overworked staff don&#8217;t make for a great paper.<\/p>\n<p>If anything, Fairfax should double the number of journos on the SMH &amp; Sun Herald staffs- and start properly exploiting the online business with more professional, TV-news type packaged stories for vodcasting. With the advent of miniature, portable wireless digital video technologies, Fairfax could have a journo on nearly every streetcorner. Fairfax could own a very much fatter share of Sydney and Melbourne markets just by out-peopling Noise Ltd. Wouldn&#8217;t it be cool to get SMH top stories in a vodcast emailed to your mobile phone?<\/p>\n<p>If Fairfax tries to compete merely by cutting the hearts out of their flagship assets, they&#8217;re <strong>doomed.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>-weez<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Fairfax papers are simply the best in Australia. The SMH and The Age are very fine old papers, trying to have a go in a new century. However, someone over at Fairfax has decided that for a paper to be commercially successful in the modern media mix, it has to cost next to nothing [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-411","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/machinegunkeyboard.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/411","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/machinegunkeyboard.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/machinegunkeyboard.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/machinegunkeyboard.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/machinegunkeyboard.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=411"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/machinegunkeyboard.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/411\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/machinegunkeyboard.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=411"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/machinegunkeyboard.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=411"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/machinegunkeyboard.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=411"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}