Up to 70 (staff) photographers from News Corp Australia titles have been informed that their positions have been made redundant. This comes as Rupert Murdoch's Australian papers have adopted an outsourcing model. This new one entails more of a 'hybrid model, consisting of a core team of photographic specialists, complemented by freelance and agency talent.' Fairfax Media, another Australian media company, has also taken the initiative to cut costs by cutting 125 journalists on both the Sydney Morning Herald and the Age newspapers. News Corp's attempts to cut costs are associated more so with its printed newspapers, which reportedly attract just a fraction of the advertising revenue that they once did. The papers that will be making this change are the Daily Telegraph, the Herald Sun, the Courier-Mail and the Adelaide Advertiser. An example of represent this is how in a state like New South Wales, a total of just 20 photographers will continue to work across all the local newspapers as well as the Daily Telegraph and the Sunday Telegraph while over 25 will be made redundant.
- News Corp Australia, which posted a second-quarter loss of $287m in February
- Sources told Guardian Australia that out of 20 photographers at Queensland Newspapers, only five will remain. Thirteen were forced to take redundancy and two took voluntary redundancy
Redundancies in traditional media organisations are just a reality of what's a dying medium today. People trained in areas like photography and just journalism in general are now finding themselves to be put out of their occupations for the simple fact that e-media has taken over. It'll be interesting to see whether or not this leads to a reduction in the quality of news stories over the next few years.
No comments:
Post a Comment