If John Hartigan believes that "the willingness of readers to pay for [news] will depend on the quality of the content", he may want to note how his own pieces are sub-edited in his own News Limited papers. Kudos to Tim Burrowes from Mumbrella for spotting this.
The bad sub-editing seems contagious Rod McGuinness spotted this with Christian Kerr's House Rules column online, which has remained untouched for three days.
3 comments:
The fact that The Australian has sacked about a third of its subs in the past year or so might have something to do with this sort of "quality".
News Limited is up to its neck in debt because of Murdoch's misadventures in China, paying far to much for the Wall Street Journal, and other great moments in high finance.
The search for quality consists of showing senior journalists such as Mike Steketee and Elizabeth Wynhausen the door, and sacking about half of the photographers, as well as the subs.
People who have worked at the Oz for upwards of 20 years have been given to understand that redundancy payments to which they are entitled by law are conditional on secrecy, and in some cases have been told to leave the building immediately.
yes it's always sad when businesses have to cut back staff. Confidentiality agreements and leaving the building immediately are normal procedures in the real world
We are seeing a poisonous cycle of newspaper collapse. As their revenue lowers, they cut staff to keep making profits, and as they cut staff their content is comprimised, which makes it less readable, which lowers the readership, which further lowers the revenue.
The whole thing is turning into one ugly quamire: these hardworking journalists are losing their jobs through no fault of their own. Greedy, profiteering capitalists are getting away with horrible mismanagement, turning professional journalism into flash-and-dash emptiness - tabloid media, the Herald Sun. And 'the newspaper', with its beautiful aesthetics, is dying despite there being no reason for it to.
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