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Speaker 1: Welcome to Fear and Greed Q and A where we

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Speaker 1: ask and answer questions about business, investing, economics, politics and more.

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Speaker 1: I'm Michael Thompson. Hello, Sean Aylmer, Hello Michael John. Today

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Speaker 1: how long can newspapers survive? We spoke this week about

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Speaker 1: News Corp and Nine, the two major publishers in this country,

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Speaker 1: along with Australian Community Media, signing a deal that would

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Speaker 1: see them consolidate print sites. It's going to save millions

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Speaker 1: of dollars and there are reports from both sides basically

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Speaker 1: that this contract is going to last for another five years.

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Speaker 1: You are, i would say, well, at least within the

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Speaker 1: Fear and Greed team, uniquely qualified to give us your

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Speaker 1: take on this, because, first of all, your credentials you

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Speaker 1: were the editorial director at Fairfax and you've worked as

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Speaker 1: a business journalist, as an editor and in a lot

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Speaker 1: of different newsrooms. What did that involve first of all,

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Speaker 1: and then we'll get into where we're heading.

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Speaker 2: So my job by the end there was to run

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Speaker 2: the newsrooms at the fin Review, the Cinney Morning Herald,

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Speaker 2: the Age, WA and Brisbane websites. I didn't have Fairfax

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Speaker 2: at the time, didn't have print operations in those cities.

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Speaker 2: So that was it. Now, a lot of that was

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Speaker 2: obviously dealing with journalists, but a lot of it was

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Speaker 2: actually dealing with corporate part of Fairfax, and it was

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Speaker 2: all about how do we make money the revenue side,

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Speaker 2: marketing side, distribution side, really big one, how do we

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Speaker 2: keep print going back? Then, the issue was that print

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Speaker 2: brought in all the money that story earlier in the

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Speaker 2: week publishing print brings in forty percent of the money.

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Speaker 2: Six percent must be digital, I suppose, but that is

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Speaker 2: still a lot of money coming in via print.

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Speaker 1: So we have been Then are we in a trend

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Speaker 1: of declining circulations? Then? For print publications? Is that the

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Speaker 1: issue here? Is there a migration towards digital or is

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Speaker 1: it a bigger issue?

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Speaker 2: It might be apocryphal, but it's kind of right. The

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Speaker 2: day that the Fairfax Sydney Morning Herald it printed a

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Speaker 2: four hundred page edition and it was in their new

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Speaker 2: Printing Press in Western Sydney and quite an incredible moment

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Speaker 2: for the organization. New Printing Press opened four hundred page

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Speaker 2: Saturday edition of the Sydney Morning Herald and that was

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Speaker 2: its peak. So basically the day the press, well, you know,

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Speaker 2: the week or the month that the press new Printing

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Speaker 2: Press opened at Chilaura, it started going backwards, started going

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Speaker 2: the wrong way.

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Speaker 1: When was that roughly, just.

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Speaker 2: Trying to remember, early two thousands. I think I may

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Speaker 2: have that wrong, but that was its peak and the

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Speaker 2: business model broke. People consumed news online, not in print.

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Speaker 2: It's as simple as that. Newspapers are fairly simple businesses.

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Speaker 2: You can tell how well they're doing by the number

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Speaker 2: of ads in them. You can tell how thick. So

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Speaker 2: I don't know what a Cinny Morning Herald weekend edition

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Speaker 2: is now maybe one hundred pages, eighty to one hundred pages.

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Speaker 2: I'm guessing about a quarter of the size of what

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Speaker 2: it was the ad. So what you do get in

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Speaker 2: newspapers some so Harvey Norman so Jerry Harvey has always

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Speaker 2: been a huge supporter of print. So that's Harvey Norman

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Speaker 2: and Domain are the travel companies huge supporters of print,

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Speaker 2: and Thad huge supporters of print. So they form guides.

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Speaker 2: And I'm not just talking Fairfax here, I'm talking news

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Speaker 2: Corp as well. That form guide is a very valuable

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Speaker 2: thing to have, especially for things like The Herald's Sun Daily,

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Speaker 2: Telly Career Mail. Those sorts of groups, but the glory

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Speaker 2: days are gone.

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Speaker 1: How much of that as well? It was tied to

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Speaker 1: the decline of the classifiers, because remember the classifiers, weren't

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Speaker 1: they referred to as like the rivers of gold, and

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Speaker 1: you just might see one page of classifieds.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, classified classifiers. The rivers of gold were even before

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Speaker 2: my time in a sense that was really late nineteen

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Speaker 2: It was like nineteen seventies, eighties nineties. They were really

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Speaker 2: rivers of gold. But once the Internet was created and

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Speaker 2: people could buy online, it just took a lot of

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Speaker 2: the gloss off that now seek and domain and not castles.

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Speaker 2: But one of those ones actually grew out of those

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Speaker 2: rivers of gold and they emerged from that. In the end,

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Speaker 2: Fairfax owned domain successor nine has just out of domain.

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Speaker 2: But really fair Facts as it was, never really held

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Speaker 2: on to those rivers of gold in a digital world,

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Speaker 2: and that was really where the declient kicked in. Now,

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Speaker 2: good luck to my I hope they keep going for

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Speaker 2: a long time. But I remember talking to the CEO

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Speaker 2: of the New York Times, it must have been fifteen

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Speaker 2: years ago, and he said he gave the New York

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Speaker 2: Times a decade as a print daily Print Group last

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Speaker 2: year Rip and Murdoch said, if they're lucky, they'll have

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Speaker 2: fifteen more years. So we've been talking about the decline

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Speaker 2: and death of newspapers forever, well not forever, but for

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Speaker 2: twenty years. They haven't happened yet. Personally, I would be

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Speaker 2: absolutely stunned if there were still daily printed newspapers in

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Speaker 2: ten years time, Like, I just don't think that'll be.

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Speaker 2: There may be weeklies. But the other big issue, which

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Speaker 2: you don't sort of use it for get about, it's

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Speaker 2: actually distribution. So it's not just a creation, but how

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Speaker 2: do you get the newspaper into someone's hand. Now people

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Speaker 2: used to have it delivered to their doorstep. It's actually

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Speaker 2: really hard to do that, that last mile to get

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Speaker 2: from the newsagent because newsagents don't want to be delivering

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Speaker 2: newspapers anymore, and so there's a lot of talk about

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Speaker 2: how you do that, and that's a real problem. It's

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Speaker 2: okay if you can go and throw forty copies at

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Speaker 2: an office building, but you can't deliver newspapers. So it's

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Speaker 2: not just people not wanting them, but actually it's hard

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Speaker 2: for people to get them. Buying them now is hard.

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Speaker 1: So it's a decade is that what you reckon at best?

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Speaker 1: Like that is that probably been.

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Speaker 2: That general absolute best. I mean, I think the deal

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Speaker 2: that was done between news Corp, Stoning Community Media and Nine,

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Speaker 2: that deal ten you. They those guys hate each other.

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Speaker 2: They have always hated each other arch enemies. And I

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Speaker 2: know that Nine wanted to do a deal with news

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Speaker 2: Corp about fifteen years ago. News Corp said no. So

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Speaker 2: the fact that they're doing it just shows how desperate

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Speaker 2: all sides are.

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Speaker 1: All Right, it seems like a good place to leave it.

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Speaker 1: Thank you very much, Sean.

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Speaker 2: Thank you, Michael.

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Speaker 1: Remember if you've got something that you'd like to know,

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Speaker 1: then send through a question on LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook, or

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Speaker 1: at Fearangreed dot com dot au. I'm Michael Thompson and

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Speaker 1: this is Fear and Greed Q and a