Mood:
blueTopic: big media
It's the second day of a 3 day strike by Sydney's Fairfax journalists.
The weekend edition which is normally a chunky paper by anyone's measure has just as many adverts as one might expect judging by the weight.
But the signs of the venerable SMH evolving into a glorified Trading Post are there.
Advertisers might need to consider some departures less obvious to the untrained eye explaining the rather limited reading fodder in this weekend's edition:
1. The lead section of the broadsheet starting at page 1 is devoid of current material from local staff writers. The lead is the Barak Obama ascension in US politics which ordinarily would be a top story regardless - by Herald correspondents overseas. Otherwise look to every local story and it's the newswire cookie cutter AAP authorship - even when there is a byline.
For what is known as the A1 advertiser demographic - cashed up professionals who also listen/watch the ABC etc - they will be noticing the loss of an edge in the content as this reader does. More seriously they will increasingly realise they will need to go to The Australian, Crikey.com.au, various other serious political, business sources not just out of preference but out of political economic survival - one must know who and what is going on around one in the inevitable power dynamics of society. Nor does one have to agree with the slant of the journo or paper as long as it is timely and sufficiently probitive to be tempted elsewhere.
2. Page 1 story "How Iemma kept Labor in the dark" with spill over to page 4 literally has no byline. It could be written by the CEO for all we know. The same story points to "Editorial - Page 26" .... but there is none relating to this topic. There is however on page 27 a free political rhetoric by Premier Iemma, which is so boring and tedious as to be meaningless: If Iemma says 'let's be clear' or 'it's clear' one more time then we can be sure it's not clear at all.
3. Unlike the Daily Telegraph which ironically takes the same editorial line as the SMH on keeping/selling public energy assets the News Corp paper actually runs the majority opposition of the public in the letters page. At the SMH today they somehow conspire to mostly ignore the 60-80% who oppose the sell off. Talk about overt bias.
4. Following point 1, the brave posture on p2 "Papers unaffected by Fairfax strike" is courageous indeed. Affected - yes, slow yet real impact would be our prediction. It's true the adverts have their skeleton to hangoff but the lungs are collapsing and the heart is racing toward cardiac arrest.
5. Most of the top writers are missing from the paper. Gittins as business editor, Ramsey, Carlton, Wilkinson are absent as well as regular reporters in their specialist areas so they lift a book extract instead in the case of Edmund Tadros.
6. The paper also covers with pre filed stories which lack a timing imperative from people like Richard Glover, Elizabeth Farrelly and Paola Totaro but one imagines these will be unlikely to file to break this or any future strike. Miranda Devine has a story but whether a strike breaker is unclear. It's lucky genuine experts in US politics like Bruce Wolpe in senior management are available to pad out content during this latest hot US election cycle.
6A. The paper also covers with tv adverts on Sydney commercial tv Friday night for free CD 100 years of photography with the weekend edition, a bribe to keep up circulation, must cost a bit?
7. Those who particularly like the Mike Carlton gossip will be satiated by the right wing violence fantasies implicit in the tough guy (pig shooters, bank robber) stories in Good Weekend colour supplement. Yes we did read them with guilty pleasure but only because it was the only thing left.
Much more general media background in Sunday Political Talkies piece tomorrow (and days following if we are slow to complete that segment as usual).
