Also, the SMH, The Age and The Australian Financial Review will continue to be printed at regional plants (North Richmond, Ballarat and Murray Bridge) which will be part of the sale.
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Very interesting that Nine sold the printing plants, guess unsurprising now the SMH is printed at News’ Chullora as we saw to comedic effect recently.
If the Canberra Times remains printed in Canberra, do they print any AFR/SMH/Age there?
Great shame that Ormiston was decommissioned prior to the sale. It was great site.
Anyone know if Beaudesert printing is still going?
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Nine To Move Editorial Production For Publishing In-House
Nine is continuing to invest in quality journalism by discontinuing its sub-editing agreement with Pagemasters and bringing editorial production at The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age and The Australian Financial Review back to the newsrooms.
The titles will employ a substantial number of new staff in the coming months to bolster editorial production at each of the mastheads in Sydney and Melbourne.
Having all aspects of editorial production back in-house will better enable the three mastheads to raise the quality of their journalism for readers and subscribers. The equivalent of 24 new positions will be created by the changes, with sub-editors to work onsite in the newsrooms.
Nine’s publishing division has been a long-term partner of Pagemasters and Executive Editor of The Herald and The Age James Chessell and Financial Review Editor-in-Chief Michael Stutchbury thanked them for their work over a number of years.
“This decision is warmly welcomed by the Financial Review as we believe it will allow us to redouble our efforts to build cross-platform production expertise and boost the quality of our products for subscribers,” Stutchbury said.
“This is great news that reflects the importance of The Age and The Herald’s journalism as well as the mastheads’ strong financial position,” Chessell said. “Subscribers expect quality and having our production resources as part of the same team will improve our ability to edit and present our journalism”.
Pagemasters will continue to provide some production services to the mastheads covering racing pages, TV listings, advertising feature page layouts and comment moderation.
Each masthead will move quickly to hire new staff with the new teams of sub-editors expected to be in place by September 30.
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This is great news. Hope MediaWatch gives it coverage on Monday.
When Fairfax owned The Sydney Morning Herald, The Sun-Herald, The Sun and ATN-7 the television guides in the newspapers always had Seven first in the listings. 2GB was also owned by Fairfax and got some preferential treatment in the radio listings. Nine hasn’t (as yet at least) given the Nine channels any added prominence in The Sydney Morning Herald television guide.
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I have seen scans of guides from that era, very interesting.
Nine are continuing their Pagemasters contract for TV guides, if they want a change, they can direct them.
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The Ironman Group, which is a division of Chinese owned Wanda Sports Holdings company (owner of Hoyts Cinemas), will buy the events division for $31 million.
While Nine is disposing of the mass market events, most notably the Sydney City2Surf, the business and food assets which include the Night Noodle Markets, Good Food Month, The Australian Financial Review Business Summit and Women of Influence Awards, will move into the group’s publishing division and be aligned with their respective editorial brands.
As part of these changes, Nine also confirmed it would no longer continue with some of its smaller sporting events and also close the group’s parenting shows.
Nine’s publications will continue to have an ongoing relationship with their respective events as naming partners.
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This is a good move. Fairfax were big on these ‘consolation’ businesses instead of the many missed opportunities with online advertising in sectors that have undermined their old print classified ‘rivers of gold’.
Wanda will be able to cut a lot of fat out of these bloated businesses that have often been a shelter for staff fleeing other jobs facing cut back.
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And will save money too. Don’t forget that either.
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The following paper is not owned by Nine anymore, but I thought it’s worth posting it in this thread anyway.
As from today, The Canberra Times (now owned by Antony Catalano) now has new subscription packages, in which non-subscribers can now can only read 5 free articles a month, in line with other regional papers such as the Illawarra Mercury & the Newcastle Herald. In other words, one can no longer rely on The Canberra Times for an unlimited alternative to the SMH & The Age, who from this point, now offer more free articles per month for non-subscribers.
More:
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And the paywall is as useless as the SMH, Age and AFR paywalls. News Corp has near impenetrable paywalls, whereas Nine and ACM are full of holes.
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If only there was a way to outline the article
Didn’t Nine move The Canberra Times into ACM because people were using that paper’s site to get around SMH/Age paywalls?
Makes you wonder why they (or Fairfax before them) didn’t just impliment a paywall!
There is a website which used to be able to outline the article. The function no longer works since News Corp revamped its paywall a few months ago.
One can. They just might have to pay for it. Fair enough too.
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Very interesting to continue Faifax’s regional model. I wondered what rejigging of supply new owners would bring. Yet to see a fresh approach.
Was that their primary reason?
The metro titles are of more value to Nine as they will have a regional presence via radio and TV in Canberra when they acquire SCA down the track.
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The silly thing is that the original article at AFR website can only be read by subscribers. How can it entice people to subscribe if they don’t know the changes?
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