Newspapers without sub-editors?

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Fair­fax man­age­ment has recent­ly decid­ed to sack its in-house sub-edi­tors, and out-source the role to the com­pa­ny Page­Mas­ters:

Fair­fax to look at out­sourc­ing options

Fair­fax sets new out­sourc­ing dead­line

Fair­fax con­firms out­sourc­ing plans with 82 jobs to go

Fair­fax jour­nal­ists to dis­cuss strikes

In one way, this move is an under­stand­able response to the impact of the rise of the inter­net on adver­tis­ing sales rev­enue for news­pa­pers. But in anoth­er, it is a weird attempt to reduce costs by out­sourc­ing an essen­tial step in the process of pro­duc­ing a dai­ly newspaper–a bit like com­mit­ting Harakiri in order to lose weight.

Subs aren’t seen by the read­ers of a news­pa­per, but they play sev­er­al essen­tial roles, from scan­ning reports from exter­nal news ser­vices (“wire ser­vices”, as they were once called) to copy edit­ing, last minute lay­out changes, etc.

They also inter­act with the jour­nal­ists writ­ing sto­ries, and they tend to be “old hands” at the news­pa­per game, with the wis­dom as well as the cyn­i­cism that goes with that.

To my mind, this pro­pos­al is a bit like remov­ing inter­ac­tion between expe­ri­enced nurs­es at a hos­pi­tal and new­by dTo my mind, it would be a bit like remov­ing inter­ac­tion between expe­ri­enced nurs­es at a hos­pi­tal and new­by doc­tors. I’d pre­fer to go to a hos­pi­tal where expe­ri­enced nurs­es restrained the enthu­si­asm of inex­pe­ri­enced if well-trained new doc­tors. Out­sourc­ing won’t get too much in the way of the base func­tions, but it will end that inter­ac­tion between old hands and new jour­nal­ists, and I expect that the papers will become much weak­er for it.

This is iron­ic, because a major rea­son why news­pa­pers have suf­fered from the inter­net is that peo­ple can get a lot of online com­men­tary from sites like mine for free–and they rely on the news­pa­pers more for the news feeds that subs play a major role in main­tain­ing. If a news­pa­per los­es its subs–or has the same subs as its com­peti­tors because they out­source the role to the same or sim­i­lar organisations–then they lose one unique fea­ture that made them desir­able when com­pared to the world of free online com­men­tary on the Inter­net.

So I sup­port the actions of Fair­fax jour­nal­ists to resist this move, or at least to reduce its sever­i­ty and keep some of that old-time wis­dom in house. If you’d like to sup­port them as well, here is a let­ter Fair­fax jour­nal­ists sent ask­ing for sup­port:

Dear Fair­fax, Syd­ney Morn­ing Her­ald and The Age read­er, We write with an urgent request for your help to lim­it dam­ag­ing cost cut­ting at the Fair­fax mast­heads, the Syd­ney Morn­ing Her­ald and The Age. We believe these cuts will have a long-term neg­a­tive impact on the qual­i­ty of jour­nal­ism at these unique and impor­tant pub­li­ca­tions.

We urge you to email today the indi­vid­u­als below and join our online cam­paign call­ing for a more well thought out approach to change.
We are com­mit­ted, and will con­tin­ue to be com­mit­ted, to pro­vid­ing you with the robust, crit­i­cal, inde­pen­dent, qual­i­ty report­ing that has long been asso­ci­at­ed with these pub­li­ca­tions but we need your help. Please pass this email on to your friends, col­leagues and rel­a­tives.
Yours sin­cere­ly,
Edi­to­r­i­al staff at The Age and Syd­ney Morn­ing Her­ald.

Join our cam­paign on:
Face­book: Future Proof Fair­fax http://on.fb.me/mfEiHD
Twit­ter: http://twitter.com/savetheage
Twit­ter: http://twitter.com/savethesmh

PLEASE SEND THE FOLLOWING LETTER BY EMAIL TO
greg.hywood@fairfaxmedia.com.au
jmatthews@fairfaxmedia.com.au
DChurchill@theage.com.au
PFray@fairfaxmedia.com.au
rcorbett@rccorbett.com.au

Dear Mr Hywood and Mr Matthews,

Fair­fax staff recog­nise there is a need to change, par­tic­u­lar­ly when con­front­ed with a rapid­ly diver­gent media envi­ron­ment. For Fair­fax to be com­mer­cial­ly AND edi­to­ri­al­ly suc­cess­ful, staff must be includ­ed in the deci­sion mak­ing process from the begin­ning. At the moment you are fail­ing to do this. Cut­ting costs with­out con­sul­ta­tion and tar­get­ing areas that are cru­cial to the integri­ty, inde­pen­dence and qual­i­ty of your mast­heads and pub­li­ca­tions is not accept­able. Your approach is dam­ag­ing to staff morale and to the Fair­fax brands in the com­mu­ni­ties they serve. As a dili­gent read­er of your pub­li­ca­tions, I urge you to rethink your approach.

Yours sin­cere­ly,

One rea­son for my sup­port here is that, decades ago, I became friends with some sub­bies from AAP, and helped them out dur­ing the jour­nal­ists’ strike back in the late 70s (or was that the ear­ly 80s?). I also worked with them when I arranged sev­er­al sem­i­nars on jour­nal­ism back when I worked with the Aus­tralian Free­dom from Hunger Cam­paign and the Unit­ed Nations Association–one sem­i­nar on the cov­er­age of the col­lapse of Indi­a’s Jana­ta Par­ty, anoth­er on Aus­tralian and Chi­nese news cov­er­age of each oth­er’s coun­tries, and a third on Aus­tralian and South East Asian news. I came to under­stand and respect the roles they played in putting news­pa­pers togeth­er. It’s hard for me to imag­ine news­pa­pers with­out them on board.

Final­ly, the only real solu­tion here is to attack the prob­lem: the rival­ry between free infor­ma­tion on the Inter­net and the com­mer­cial roles of news­pa­pers. The only long term solu­tion will be micro­pay­ment sys­tems, which so far have been sin­gu­lar­ly unsuc­cess­ful. I’ve recent­ly added a Flat­tr link on my site, which is about the only viable micro­pay­ment sys­tem out there right now. Of course I’d per­fer to have read­ers pay a micro­pay­ment (a frac­tion of a cent) per click, and if that could be imple­ment­ed across the Inter­net then the finan­cial prob­lems that lie behind deci­sions like this might evap­o­rate.

But that, if it ever hap­pens, is far in the future. The Fair­fax journalists–both those los­ing their jobs as subs, and those who are try­ing to imag­ine their news­pa­per with­out them–are los­ing now. Please sup­port their cam­paign to reverse–or at least reduce the scale of–this man­age­ment deci­sion.