Staff at Australia’s Fairfax Media walked off the job for a week yesterday in protest at more hefty job cuts as the leading publisher struggles to cope with slumping revenues.
The strike action by journalists, including those from the Sydney Morning Herald and The Melbourne Age, followed an announcement that Fairfax will cut another 125 editorial jobs — a quarter of its newsroom — as part of a restructure to save money.
“On strike for a week,” tweeted Herald chief political correspondent James Massola after a stop-work meeting, while his colleague Judith Ireland said: “Quality journalism needs actual journalists to do the journalism.”
Fairfax, which also publishes the Australian Financial Review, has already shed hundreds of staff and restructured its operations in recent years to be more digital-focused as the internet and new publishers such as Google disrupt its business model.
The group’s editorial director Sean Aylmer announced the fresh staff cuts yesterday morning, while also flagging plans to radically scale back its use of freelancers.
Staff at the Fairfax group newspaper The Age walk out in protest yesterday after the company announced staff cuts in Melbourne.
