The Insider
LISTED companies tackle the impact of the economic slowdown in different ways.
Trimming middle level management, tightening credit control and assessing non essential expenditure are all common, and appropriate methods for minimising the impact of what are difficult times for most businesses.
Fairfax, if the experience at regional paper The Examiner are any indidication, are different.
First, it was the milk.
Fomer sales rep turned general manager Phil Leerson told staff via email a couple of weeks ago that the impact of the Global Economic Crisis meant the company could no longer afford to supply milk for employees. Morning and afternoon tea, would henceforth be black.
Staff had already been given a warning that difficult times were afoot. A former chief of staff, and a long-standing sub editor had already been ditched.
But it seems the milk was just the beginning.
Editor Fiona Reynolds was appointed last year despite having virtually no newspaper experience. The honeymoon hasn’t lasted for long – staff are now griping about being under resourced, underpaid and the inner circle determining editorial policy has survived virtually intact.
Ms Reynolds is facing declining newspaper sales and is sensitive to criticism.
Staff have been told any breaches of company policy or the editorial style guide would face the music at review time. Junior reporters, already some of the lowest paid in the nation, would not benefit from usually standard ratings upgrades if they’d mis-spelled a word, or quoted someone slightly inaccurately.
And when a senior reporter was found to have lifted a couple of jokes from the internet to include in a column, she was given a public scolding. Until three weeks later, when Ms Reyolds was phoned by Media Watch about the matter. The reporter, one of The Ex’s better staff, was promptly sacked without notice.
Plagiarism is a touchy subject at The Ex. One of the paper’s many appearances on Media Watch related to an `Invesment Feature’ on Gunns’ proposed pulp mill, which was almost entirely cut and pasted from Gunns’ website. The reporter involved, who was the Associate Editor at the time, has since retired. John Gay was invited to his retirement party. He remains a contributor to the paper, unlike the recently sacked journalist, whose only crime appears to be sharing a little humour with The Examiner’s readers.
Needless to say, staff are not happy. Journalistic performance is currently being judged by how much positive feedback is provided (writers of junior sport should do well, court reporters less so), and if a reporter dares write anything positive about somewhere other than Northern Tasmania, then beware.
