satire
5 Sep 2008
First They Came for Mike Carlton...
Ben Pobjie remembers the heady days when Fairfax was the symbol of all that was good in the world and our dreams came in broadsheet format
When I was growing up, Fairfax was the symbol of all that was good and noble in the world. Every morning my chums and I would wait eagerly outside the newsagent's, waiting for it to open so we could get our hands on the day's paper. The journalists were as gods to us; we hung on their every word, and obsessively collected our Fairfax trading cards; a Michelle Grattan was worth two Mike Carltons, but the real prize, of course, was a mint-condition Leunig. We threw slumber parties and talked long into the night of our hopes of someday becoming subeditors.They were heady days, when we thought anything was possible, and our dreams came in broadsheet format.
I suppose that, really, the loss of innocence began in 1990, when young scion Warwick Fairfax's disastrous takeover of the company ended in humiliation and ritual slaughter. And yet, I was willing to hang on to the dream until now. Until Fairfax management decided to launch a tactical strike on its own people, sacking 550 of its staff in a purge that, without hyperbole, I think I can reasonably say equals anything seen in the heyday of Joseph Stalin.
The architect of this atrocity was Fairfax chief executive David Kirk, a man who has ruthlessly applied the skills learnt as All Black captain to the media industry, collapsing the maul of quality journalism before stomping on the prone heads of his employees. However, he should be aware that in his attempt to pass quickly from the scrumbase of advertising revenue to his shareholders at five-eighth, he has not inadvertently won a scrum against his own feed, with readers rejecting the lineout call of cost-cutting and turning to the quick tap of alternative media.
However, it will take more than inappropriate metaphors to unravel this mess. Many are blaming the ructions at Fairfax on former Rural Press CEO Brian McCarthy, who arrived when the two companies merged, and apparently has tried to impose the Rural Press culture on Fairfax. This is, clearly, an appalling development that needs to be nipped in the bud with all possible speed.
The Rural Press "culture", so-called, involves cost-cutting, downsizing of editorial teams, and pursuit of profits at the expense of quality. If it continues, however, the more sinister elements of Rural Press will begin to be seen at The Age and Sydney Morning Herald. Elements like weekly lawn bowls scores. Depressing pictures of farmers standing in fields moping over dirt. Cattle sale reports. Think about that: if Brian McCarthy's reign of terror is allowed to proceed unchecked, our most respected daily newspapers will be swamped with endless prose about how firm the weaner market is. So let's not laugh this off as just another vaguely amusing tale of people losing their livelihoods.
The affected staff, of course, have done their best to prevent catastrophe. They've voiced their protests long and loud, even going out on strike for several days, forcing management to briefly produce the papers themselves using Microsoft Word and the PocketNews service on their mobile phones. But sadly, it seems there's little they can do about the situation. The jobs are gone, and they're not coming back. Like Andrew Bolt with reality, Fairfax journos are fighting a losing battle. In fact, some commentators see it as a symptom of the demise of traditional media itself.
And when it comes down to it, is that necessarily such a bad thing? Let's look at the bright side. If the "high-brow" Fairfax publications go the way of the dodo, there could be advantages. For one thing, we wouldn't have to deal with those gigantic sheets of paper. A world without broadsheets, a world without awkward folding, a world without trying to read the paper on the train and accidentally elbowing the woman next to you in the face in a vain effort to get to page five. The decline of traditional media offers exciting new opportunities to those of us who wish to avoid the wild and bloody brawls that have become an inherent part of the daily commute. In fact, it is quite possible that the overcrowding of public transport is a crisis generated entirely by the excessive space taken up by Fairfax newspapers.
On the other hand, without traditional media, we will be more than ever in thrall to the bloggers. Our news experience will be reduced to a badly spelled nightmare, as debate over the value of the UN Security Council is relegated to a mere sidebar to the issues of how George Lucas raped our memories and whether vampires can find love.
So we see, we can neither totally discard the gravitas of traditional media nor completely ignore the compact charms of the digital world. What we really need is a synthesis, a way to bring the best of both worlds together. How can we do this? How can we devise a new media that will combine the hip, fresh funkiness of WayneSwan.com with the painstaking journalism and well-honed insight of Miranda Devine? Is such a thing even possible?
Frankly, I don't know. I merely pose the questions, leaving the answers to those men of art and science eminently more qualified than I. But I do know that we need to see the Fairfax redundancies as a warning. If we ignore it; if we keep on producing the news in the same old way; if we allow ourselves to be lulled to complacency by the seductive charms of Robert Manne and Kenneth Davidson; if we shrug our shoulders and say, "it's just news, who cares, don't worry about it, I feel sleepy, let's go lie down for a bit"; if we let this happen, our very democracy is at stake.
It may not seem to affect you in any direct way if our news outlets cease to be repositories of revelation and truth and instead become tawdry hotbeds of mindless gossip and numbing cross-promotion, but sooner or later, we will feel the harsh sting of fascism, as we lose our grip on the world around us and the forces of darkness control us like marionettes with weight-loss tips and Jennifer Hawkins.
Remember citizens: first they came for Carlton. Then they came for me.
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I’ve always been of the opinion that the Age has never been sure of its own market. In a market where Rupert Murdoch has almost complete control of the Western media. All of whom have dutifully followed the master’s iron clad right wingism. Why doesn’t the Age come right out with it and pitch, all the way, to the left wing audience. There are plently of us.
Unfairfax!
The big problem is where I go for informed opinion now. I live in Sydney so I am left with a choice of the revised edition of the Herald, the Daily Telegraph (I can’t use this at all as I don’t own a budgie) or new matilda, and we all know the quality of journalism here.
I hope the death of print means the re-birth of the town crier.
The days of James Fairfax type noblesse oblige are dead (high point the National Times).
Papers have to make a buck, so one can put up with the fat real estate supplements, the appalling glossy monthly, the lifestyle supplements, as long as there is some courage on the reportorial and opinion side. But that latter has been subject to conscientious undermining for some time (under frontman thickhead Fred Hilmer), before the brutalisers of Rural Press came along.
The SMH’s opinion page has long been lamentable (save for Richard Ackland on Fridays - not there today, hm!). At least the Age Opinion page covers a broader spectrum of opinion than any other Australian paper.
The SMH’s Money section has been strategically denuded of informed and critical commentary (one can’t scare the big end of town).
Rural Press’ mentality can be readily ascertained from perusal of The Land. A shocking paper, run for the advertisements. Only the letters page has form. The bush of course is desperately in need of a decent paper (remember the all too brief National Farmer) but Rural Press says suck eggs. Can’t scare the advertisers.
But the elephant in the room is that Fairfax management is not merely preoccupied with the bottom line. It is also explicitly right-wing (the letter writers to the Oz claiming the opposite must be reading different newspapers). The Murdoch press is to be copied rather than offset. Israel and the loony local lobby are untouchable of course.
The worst aspect of Fairfax is the dimension that nobody is talking about - the Fin Review. Save for some exceptions, the AFR is a dreadful newspaper. The finance section is now a joke. The opinion pages are uniformly for the big end of town, stridently anti-labour (to think that the Fin once had competent and tolerated journos working on the labour circuit), and absurdly pro the idiot regimes currently ‘running’ the Anglo-American imperial adventure.
Fairfax may be beyond redemption.
Still, the Age’s Michael West at the moment is doing a pretty good one-man demolition of the entire Australian business community. Small mercies.
The Fairfax journos’ strike didn’t change the way the Sydney Morning Herald was brought out. As usual, it was written, sub-edited and designed by Miranda Devine, AKA Alan Oakley. For years now Alan/Miranda has been giving us the puns that are such a thrill at the top of every story, the word "REVEALED:" that introduces any bit of stale news - like a spray of water from the florist to liven up the dead roses - and the headlines for which the word "purple" is sadly inadequate. You know, "Gymslip Mum Raped by Cabinet Minister on the Day The World Lost Its Innocence". It was when Miranda/Alan took over all writing, editing and production duties that the Herald changed from a quality broadsheet to "McNews of the World", part gossip rag, part sales catalogue. For years now Mike Carlton and Alan Ramsay have been the only people I’ve been prepared to read. To be honest, I hope they both jump ship. How long will it be before John Laws’ Poet’s Corner makes an appearance?
Whoops. Neglected to mention Alan Ramsey, as making the SMH opinion page tolerable.
Time to recall that monumental piece in the SMH on Monday 11 October 2004 after Little Johnnie Howard had been re-elected over the fragile Latham. Ramsey thundered:
‘How on Earth could we have put this scheming, mendacious little man and his miserable claque back in office for another three years? … John Howard, master illusionist and toad of a human being.’
And exactly right. But no, the new crop aren’t allowed to write like that.
And when AR goes, what? Paul Sheehan? Michael Duffy? Too horrible to contemplate.
Does "newspaper" mean what it says, ie printed on paper? They all seem to have websites now, although not all material included. Advertisers are deserting "newspapers" in droves, apparently, and going online. I gather this means they are going to real estate and other kinds of online sales sites, many of which are not now owned by newspapers. Is this the revenue problem for newspapers? So newspapers can’t just ditch their print runs (thereby saving heaps of ink, paper, and printers’ salaries one assumes) and go totally online. Because they have already lost their online revenue as well. Is that it, in a nutshell?
First Sean Brown, now David Kirk. Es this like a Kiwi plot to take es over by wrecking our media outlets, one by one? Wull Wunston Peters take over Aunty nixt?
And another thing.
For a long time, Fairfax management (Warwick Senior reborn in a new guise) has placed a political line even above the financial bottom line, so it is inaccurate to emphasise the latter as predominantly driving the Fairfax agenda.
As with the AFR, Fairfax management has been happy to feed its readers pap. A vast potential readership exists that is anti-Murdoch, that understands that the American-Anglo imperial adventure is at least as decadent as ‘our’ presumed enemies, but Fairfax declines to take up the offer.
Fairfax, like Murdoch, relishes in the externalisation of ‘the other’. Black/white politics, and the enemy is out there. Horseshit of course. This is the acid test of a decent media. A capacity to confront and dissect the degeneracy that pervades our own side.
They send Anne Davies to cover the American Party Conventions, whereupon she delivers the same ignorance and vapidity that has characterised her coverage of NSW politics at home. They previously gave undue exposure and privilege to Michael Gawenda, mediocre and ponderous to a T. (similarly Fairfax has Geoff Kitney as its London-based European correspondent. Well, what a vacuum!)
An informed sweep of the web (that vehicle both glibly derided and glibly praised) will give one a nuanced understanding of the crap that lies behind all four personages that have risen to the apex of the shitheap that is American politics, all four of which are mere marionettes to the essential powers that be. And where can one find this simple truth in Fairfax reportage? Forget it.
Ditto the Georgian flashpoint.
On the local front, Fairfax has consistently neglected the non-metropolitan audience. It lost the talented Asa Wahlquist to the Oz.
It appears that the ex-rugger bugger Kirk has had too many knocks to the head. but the rest of management?
Fairfax management still profits from the bolshie staff that it inherited, some of whom (irrationally?) hang on - Alan Ramsey at the SMH, Ken Davidson at the Age. Davidson is the ONLY economic journalist (though Gittins increasingly if unevenly joins the team) to draw back the curtains on the scandalous elephant in the room that is ‘neoliberalism’. He was the only journalist (Michelle Grattan has self-immolated) to have consistently exposed the root corruption that was the Howard years.
But when Ramsey and Davidson go (both in their twilight years), the current supreme thickheads at the top of Fairfax will elevate the journalistic lightweights who reflect their own weightlessness.
The horrible reality is that it is going to get worse.
Pour yourself a cheap Cab Sav Shiraz (chardonnay nowhere to be seen) and get used to it.
I used to buy the SMH weekend edition every Saturday and spend the whole afternoon pouring over it. A weekly ritual and Mike Carlton’s column was the best part followed by some of the stories in the News Review. Over the years the standard of the stories declined, Miranda Devine entered the opinion pages and my paper-reading Sat afternoons became shorter, to the point that I only read Carlton and skimmed through the rest. But I still paid the $2.20 for the paper instead of reading it online.
Now that Carlton is gone I see no point in buying that bundle anymore. My $2.20 will not affect the bottom line at Fairfax but it is my protest at the sacking of the staff and the decline in standards + right wing garbage in the opinion section of the SMH.
I always saw Miranda Devine and Mike Carlton as ying and yang. They’re opposite in politics. One would make you cry (perhaps sobbing ‘there aren’t people who really think like this?’) with predictable drivel, the other would make you laugh with predictable antics.
Neither were informative or enlightening or offered you a new perspective on world matters. There’s very little in the papers that will - but a lot online if you can shift through the crud. The Guardian Weekly is great, if you don’t care about local issues.
Ben, you’re very right that the downturn of our newspapers is affecting our democracy. What can we do?
Jess
Jess, in this as in all matters, violence is very much the answer.
The UTS Australian Centre for Independent Journalism has an upcoming forum on 19 September.
Does investigative journalism have a future in Australia?
Hear the views of investigative journalists, Gerard Ryle (SMH) and Ross Coulthart (fomerly of the Sunday program), and Paul Whittaker (Editor, The Australian) with Mark Bannerman at the George Munster forum on Friday 19 September. All welcome.
Time: Drinks from 6pm, forum 6.30 - 8pm
Venue: University of Technology, Sydney (UTS), Guthrie Theatre, 702-730 Harris Street, Level 3, Ultimo
RSVP: For catering only, Jan McClelland or 9514 2295
Free public event - free drinks and refreshments
The forum will be broadcast on the ABC Radio National Big Ideas program on 28 September at 5pm (tbc).
This event is hosted by the UTS Australian Centre for Independent Journalism.
Managing Editor
newmatilda.com