On Wed, 20 Jun 2012, Brent Wallis <brent.wallis@gmail.com> wrote:
"She is also asking for the right to make significant editorial decisions such as the ability to hire and fire editors."
Which will turn The Age into a mining newsletter. poo...who wants to read that.
Lots of people want to read the Herald-Sun, rubbish sells.
A golden age of Journalism born of the democratisation that is the Internet. All those experienced editorial staff that are about to lose their jobs have skills and their employers sacking them should (hopefully) fuel passion.
I reckon this will be a perfect time for some start up action. In a place where the main stream just can not go.
A start up doesn't have to hold on to their profitability like the incumbents do. Starting a news site in competition with an on line only Age would not cost much. All that would be need is good content born of good journos. A dumped Fairfax Journo would have great opportunity ahead.
Getting a revenue stream is hard. There are some professional bloggers who make decent money from advertising, but there aren't many of them and the things that they do often aren't what you would want from professional journalists. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crikey.com.au Then there's the issue of legal liability, the Crikey Wikipedia page is worth reading...
I'll bet my house that several new Online only news brands will emerge very quickly in the next few months. Some may fail, but in the end...
Stephen Mayne bet his house on Crikey...
Fairfax and News are doomed ! Their current moves are meant to placate the markets and try and show that they are able to remain relevant.
Let's hope that they go away. Let's all spread the URLs for various alternatives to printed news to everyone we know and advise them on how to buy cheap tablets to read the news on. http://www.kogan.com/au/buy/10-inch-tablet-pc-android-16gb/ Kogan has some decent deals on Android tablets. I've got on of the above on order, I paid for a $180 tablet with 8G but they changed me to that one because they sold more of the 8G tablet than they could buy. -- My Main Blog http://etbe.coker.com.au/ My Documents Blog http://doc.coker.com.au/