Australian journalist hits the mark

http://www.smh.com.au/news/opinion/newspapers-that-shrink-will-grow/2008/10/06/1223145255829.html

Former editor of The Age in Melbourne reacts to announcement of layoffs at Fairfax, which owns most of the newspapers in Australia that Rupert Murdoch doesn't.

Money grafs:

This piece struck a chord with me. We don't have a lot of control over whether newspapers live or die; much of that is in the hands of the publishers, and the readers.

We as journalists have all the control, however, to determine whether journalism lives or dies.

That's where the focus needs to be, I think.

 

I agree. Good points there.

I think so many layoffs and staff reductions could be avoided if publishers just showed the courage and gumption to actually work on constructing a newspaper model that will be profitable into the future. Layoffs are always the easiest short-term solution.

Bottom line is, most publishers suffer from the "We just want to do things the way they've always been done" syndrome. It's all a house of cards. The more infrastructure and staff and overhead they can trim without collapsing and without entirely revamping their model, that's what they'll do.

But eventually it will be time to pay the piper. Until publishers start developing new models for the future and are dedicated to making change and sticking with new ideas and, most imprtantly, suffering losses of profits in the short-term, then those papers will fail sooner or later.