Unrest at The Age

April 25, 2008, 4:48pm,  133 views

Crikey gives an interesting account of current unrest at Fairfax newspapers.

According to the writer Margaret Simons, The Age is planning to cut pages to reduce costs in response to falling revenue.

She says a year after the Rural Press and Fairfax merger, divisions within the company are becoming more intense: between Sydney and Melbourne, and between the print sections and online.

The second part interests me. I’ve believed for a while now, and discussed this with other journalists, that The Age online is much more tabloid in its character than the newspaper.

The Age is my favorite online news site, but occasionally dishes up entertainment gossip and quirky stories that never see the light of day on a broadsheet.

I enjoy reading the web site more than the print edition. From Crikey:

“Despite the integration of the newsrooms the Fairfax Media management structure is out of kilter with industry trends in that the online division is run separately to print media and business media. One of the effects is a digital presence that is out of character - and considerably more “tabloid” than the hard copy mastheads. Both Fairfax insiders and industry observers are questioning whether this effectively undermines the “brand”. And at a senior management level, the increasing tensions are described by insiders as making the operation unstable and commercially risky.”

I don’t understand why there would be management conflict, but at an editorial level I can imagine there might be some disagreement.

When the Sunday edition started it had its own character, but has slowly been absorbed into The Age culture. Better to let the web editors run their own race, I suggest.