When I was a child the NZ Herald was two inches thick. I recall my father, who worked as an insurance agent, carefully going through the births every day to find new prospects to cold call, and the for sale section that was… thick. I got my first car via the classified advertisements.
The paper had journalists who reported local news, but relied on Reuters and the Washington Post for international information. And everyone read it. Now the only reason to get it is Sudoku and the Cryptic Crossword.
The classified are now on ebay and trademe. And the blogs are more reliable. This has consequences.
Media giant Fairfax will close or sell 35 per cent of its New Zealand print titles as the Australian group pursues a digital strategy for the Kiwi unit, now rebranded Stuff.
The Fairfax Media Ltd. logo is displayed outside their offices in Sydney, Australia, on Wednesday, Feb. 1, 2012. Fairfax Media, Australia’s second-largest newspaper publisher, climbed the most in 12 years in Sydney after the Australian Financial Review reported that billionaire Gina Rinehart planned to boost her stake. Photographer: Brendon Thorne/Bloomberg via Getty Images
The Fairfax Media Ltd. logo.
Source: Getty
Group chief executive Greg Hywood, who recently oversaw the demerger of the Domain real estate listing website in Australia, today said the Sydney-based company will exit just over a third of its New Zealand suit of print publications, which includes Wellington’s Dominion Post, Christchurch’s Press, Hamilton’s Waikato Times, and the Sunday Star Times.
Slated for closure or sale are 28 regional giveaway newspapers and agricultural publications. Its major metropolitan and regional city newspapers are not in the extensive list of small-scale publications that Fairfax wishes to quit.
Fairfax’s New Zealand media revenue fell 4.5 per cent to $160 million in the six months ended December 31, while earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation sank 24 per cent to $20.7m.
Of that, print advertising sales dropped 15 per cent to $77.2m, while print subscriptions slipped 4.3 per cent to $48.8m. Digital revenue jumped 33 per cent to $24.2m.
“We have enormous confidence that Stuff is heading towards sustained growth as its digital business continues its strong momentum,” Mr Hywood said.
Fairfax has written down its New Zealand mastheads to just $175.2m as at June 30, 2017 from as much as $1.12 billion when the one-time Australian family-owned media group purchased the Kiwi business from Rupert Murdoch’s Independent Newspapers Ltd in 2003.
I strongly suggest that anyone who wishes to write and report blog. If you are good, use Hatreon to fund it. But, far better, do something useful and treat it as a hobby. For if you work for a newspaper, it is a matter of when, not if, the job folds behind you.
This is very tough for the people whose jobs are at risk.
There might be opportunities for someone to take over some of the titles but print media is not a growing business and rural media is a very crowded space.
We knew farming was in resurgence when the letterbox started filling up with give-aways.
We now get several free rural papers a week, sometimes three or more in a day.
If we don’t have time to read them when they come they often go out barely read or unread because at least another has come before we get back to them.
It is going to get worse. Cam Slater, from WhaleOil, now offers subscriptions with (horror) crosswords and with more detailed discussions of the events of the day. The bloggers have discovered paywalls and are working out what will sell.
But you can run a blog on a kitchen table.
The days of the large newsroom are numbered. Either go large (Video logging, frequent posting, investigations) or stay at home. This place will stay small. For small is sustainable.