Can Gina Save Fairfax?

Can Gina save Fairfax…?

Probably not, but she might be able to prop it up with her unfathomable purse strings as some sort of “plaything” in much the same way as Rupert Murdoch keeps the loss making masthead The Australian afloat by his good grace.

The reality is, as we all know, that printed newspapers are dying at a rate of knots.  The only thing that has changed in recent months is the accelerating rate of their demise.

The challenge for the operators, is how to transform their businesses from traditionally profitable print-based mediums into similarly profitable online ventures.

It is a challenge that may well prove insurmountable.

While the surprise announcement of mass job losses at The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald came from left field, the writing, so to speak, has been on the wall for years.

In the space of a few years, more and more readers are turning to the internet for news and current affairs, a change in behaviour exacerbated by the proliferation of hand held devices, ubiquitous wireless internet and a consumer thirst for up-to-the-second news and information.

Many traditional mainstream media journalists have already taken to twitter to communicate directly with readers – effectively circumventing the traditional Editor/Sub-Editor bureaucracy that was typically involved in reviewing and approving editorial content prior to publication.

The downside in all of this, is that “investigative journalism” is now a thing of the past.

It has been sacrificed in favour of a confection of instant sound grabs and information bites each competing for audience attention and doing so with the fleeting promise of a hint of scandal, rumour or salacious innuendo.

The cost we pay, as consumers, is that we are no longer credited with the intelligence to read, digest and interpret a detailed, or well-considered analysis of current world events.

And for this we are all lesser off; the media operators, the journalists and editors, and we the readers.

The announcement that Fairfax will now pursue an online “paywall” strategy at the expense of its broadsheets is no real surprise.  It’s been lagging behind in this space for years.

And to be honest, it didn’t really have a choice.

However whether it will make any money from a payview model remains to be seen, and based on the experience of other publishers the outlook is not good.