News Ltd Queensland editorial director David Fagan and current The Courier-Mail editor Michael Crutcher will both depart the company.

Chris Dore, Peter Gleeson, Catherine Webber and Rod Savage have all been appointed as editors of various mastheads.

• Mr Dore, currently editor of the Sunday Times in Perth, has been appointed editor of The Courier Mail.
• Mr Gleeson, currently editor of the Gold Coast Bulletin, has been appointed editor of The Sunday Mail taking over from Scott Thompson.
• Ms Webber succeeds Mr Gleeson as the editor of the Gold Coast Bulletin, where she began her career as a general news reporter.

News+ development leader Rod Savage will move across the country to Perth, where he’ll succeed Mr Dore.

News Ltd CEO Kim Williams said Mr Fagan was an integral part of the company’s strategy in Queensland, overseeing the transformation of newsrooms from print to digital.

“Six newsrooms that once operated separately now work cooperatively together,” Mr Williams said.

“David has overseen the creation of one-state news force, which is great for both customers and our competitive position in Queensland.”

The appointments will become effective following the departure of Mr Fagan next Friday, June 21.

Survey results highlighted 26 percent of people pay attention to advertisements in newspapers and magazines as opposed to 22 percent for television, 16 percent for radio, 14 percent for billboards and eight percent for online.

Ads in apps and games performed the worst with only five percent of people paying attention to the advertisements.
90 percent of Australians don’t mind a company customizing its products to their online profile, but 73 percent said they found it online ads, which track their search history and target ads to their interests, “creepy”.

It’s a good news story which reinforces the advertising power of printed newspapers, despite the fact they continue to lose advertising revenue to digital. The data also raises questions for the future of newspapers as publishers continue to try to build robust revenue streams online.
Adobe chief marketing officer Ann Lewnes said: “Digital marketing has created a remarkable opportunity, but it comes with higher expectations from consumers.

“They expect a story tailored specially for them, a level of trust and transparency with the brands they do business with and, most importantly, a great experience. Brands delivering anything less will ultimately be ignored.”

“These survey results demonstrate that we aren’t quite delivering on digital marketing’s full potential yet. We now have the technology and know-how to target relevant and personalized marketing messaging and media to our customers. Shame on us, if we don’t deliver on that.”

The data was drawn from an online survey among a nationally representative sample of the population of in seven countries across the United States, Asia-Pacific and Europe.

The study was based on interviews with 8750 consumers and 1750 professional marketers across the United States, Europe (United Kingdom, Germany and France) and Asia-Pacific (Japan, Australia, and South Korea).

The findings will be discussed at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity next week.

The meeting came about through a program called “The Under Age” which takes 12 young people every six months and gives them an insight into the workings of the media.

The program run by Fairfax Media and Express Media aims to give those who want a snap shot of what it is like to work as a journalist.

Project coordinator Rebecca Harkins-Cross said: “This project was initially a temporary project run by both Fairfax and Express Media in 2011 however it’s still going today and it’s growing and growing.”

Ms Harkins-Cross has been working with Express Media and “The Under Age” since 2012 and enjoys working with such conscientious young students.

“We work with students between the ages of 13 and 18 and when we start teaching them it’s usually at a first year university level … because that is generally where they are at,” she said.

The group meets every fortnight at The Age offices in Melbourne and they pitch story ideas and help each other develop their content.

“The students have workshops with Martin McKenzie-Murray (a columnist with The Age) as well as Amber Jamieson from Crikey.com.au to help them with their writing style, but they also know they have me if they need to bounce off ideas or to just have a chat.

“In high school it can be hard to find people that you have something in common with so this workshop brings together kids with a common interest and they can help each other develop their skills,” Ms Harkins-Cross said.

The project is currently looking for its next intake of budding journalists, if you would like to be involved click here to find out how to get in the running.

Applications are now open and the next round of applications close on Monday, July 1.

The national centralised sales team will be led by recently appointed group sales director, Ed Harrison.

The team will be responsible for sales previously managed within Metro Media, Financial Review Group (FRG), Fairfax Regional Media and Agricultural Media.

Fairfax Media’s national sales director, Paul Sigaloff, will become the national sales team’s agency sales director expanding his portfolio beyond The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age to include the FRG, Regional Media and Agricultural Media.

FRG’s commercial director Simon Smith will become the sales team’s media solutions director – a role which looks after fx creative solutions, FRG events and the sales specialists covering all APM products and brands.

The company’s trade marketing director Chelsea Wymer and its ad operations and systems director Jon Moffat will both expand their portfolios to include all assets under APM.

The company is currently recruiting for a direct sales director; pricing and inventory director; and, digital ad development director.

Mr Harrison said: “Media agencies are increasingly looking for solutions that extend well beyond traditional media.”

“Combining Fairfax’s powerful media brands will see us deliver innovative and integrated advertising solutions at scale.

“I’m confident that this new structure will make sense to our advertisers and agencies and I’m sure they’ll appreciate the higher level of firepower that these changes provide.”

The exits were triggered on Tuesday when West Australian Newspapers chief executive Chris Wharton announced the company would make 100 redundancies, including 33 editorial staff.

News Limited also announced significant departures this week, with News Ltd Queensland editorial director David Fagan and The Courier-Mail editor Michael Crutcher both leaving the company.

Mr Crutcher (@MJCrutcher) tweeted: “It’s been a privilege to edit The Courier-Mail, but an even greater privilege to work with a newsroom of outstanding people. My best wishes.”

Herald Sun editor-in-chief Phil Gardner confirmed this week he was leaving News Ltd’s biggest-selling newspaper.

Mr Gardner, who began his career as a cadet reporter on Johannesburg’s The Rand Daily Mail, told The Australia’s media section he had “thoroughly enjoyed” working at News Ltd for 28 years.

“It’s been fun, challenging and immensely rewarding,” Mr Gardner said.

“Most of all, I am proud to have contributed to one of the world’s greatest newspapers, and been part of its transformation to a multi-media, multi-platform publication.

“There comes a time for all of us to move on. I leave with a great sense of achievement, many fond memories and friends, and an intense sense of optimism about the future of journalism.

“The future for journalism is bright. More people than ever are reading our stories, seeing our pictures and watching our videos. We are finding new ways to reach audiences and to tell great stories.”

And yesterday Fairfax Media axed key roles in their lifestyle division, with food and wine general manager Lisa Hudson and travel general manager Lauren Quaintance leaving the publisher.

In an internal letter to staff, Life Media director Melina Cruickshank said: “These changes will allow us to move forward and build this division into a nimble operation, with less management layers.”

Across the ditch, Fairfax New Zealand group executive editor Paul Thompson announced he’ll be leaving the company in September to take up the role of CEO of Radio NZ.

The Australian Newspaper Digitization Program (ANDP), which runs alongside the Australian Newspaper Plan, is set to digitize its 10 millionth newspaper page next month.

A partnership between the Australian national, state and territory libraries, the Australian Newspaper Plan was set up in the early 90s, with each state library taking responsibility for archiving newspapers from their jurisdiction and the national library preserving certain national publications.

National Library of Australia’s Hilary Berthon says the ANDP benefits the entire community who can access digitized titles for free via its Trove website: www.trove.nla.gov.au

“Newspapers are an incredibly rich source of documentary heritage,” Ms Berthon said.

“We have researchers, family history buffs, school groups and other people who really enjoy being able to look into the history of their area, historical news events, as well as births, deaths and marriages.”

The digitization process begins with newspaper microfilm … a strip which contains the newspaper pages. The microfilm is scanned as images, which the national library checks for quality. Then the digitized images are sent for processing by optical character recognition (OCR) software which replicates the newspaper text as a full text file.

Finally, the coordinates of the article are recorded and classified by topics and sections to make them easy to search for online.

Additionally, members of the public can ‘sponsor’ their favorite newspaper title to be digitized. The ANDP project represents a significant investment by the National Library – around $2.5 million annually, excluding contributor time and funds.

Ms Berthon says volunteers have been instrumental in overcoming one of the biggest challenges of the project – poor print quality, which she says can vary dramatically, particularly with older newspapers.

“What Trove lets people do is to come in, look at the OCR text and correct it – which is good because users can add their own knowledge to the digitized papers,” she said.

Volunteer text correction has become a surprisingly popular activity, according to Ms Berthon who says the project currently has around 5000 text correctors who regularly contribute from home, adding tags to pages along with comments.

Currently, the project is only digitizing pre 1955 newspapers, but members of the public are able to suggest newspaper titles for routinely digitization via a form on Trove, or sponsor the digitization of their favorite title. “That side of it is really growing in popularity – we’ve had around 50 contributors so far,” Ms Berthon said.

The Daily Advertiser is one such contributor. The paper partnered with Charles Sturt University, Wagga Wagga City Council and the Wagga Wagga & District Historical Society to contribute the Wagga Wagga Advertiser and Riverine Reporter.

The Daily Advertiser’s general manager Gary Olson said:

“They’ve already digitised our publication from 1868 to 1905. We are currently in stage two digitising 1906 to 1910. The third step will be to do 1911 to 1954. Our aim is to eventually have everything digitized within 12 months of our last edition.”

Mr Olson considers the financial investment (stage two will cost each partner $10,000 to $15,000) well worth it.

“Regional newspapers are the main record of what has happens in the community and now with technology we can digitize the paper and make it available to everyone through Trove.”

If you would like to go down in history by sponsoring the digitization of an Australian newspaper title, email: andp@nla.gov.au

The project has digitized more than 500 newspapers so far, but with more than 7700 estimated newspapers created in Australia to date and counting, Ms Berthon says the project is a long-term commitment.

 

The Evening News – an example of an archived Newspaper

WHO: Communications and media professionals

WHAT: Two days of debate, discussion and training with some of Australia’s most influential movers and shakers in lobbying, media and professional communication strategies

WHEN: June 27 and 28

WHERE: National Press Club, Canberra

RSVP: www.walkleys.com.au

VIPS include:

• Malcolm Farr: chief political writer, news.com.au;
• Katharine Murphy: deputy political editor, Guardian Australia;
• Peter Fray: editor-in-chief, PolitiFact;
• Andrew Meares: chief photographer, Fairfax Media bureau;
• Christopher Warren: Federal secretary, Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance and chief executive, The Walkley Foundation
• Erin Polgreen, founder and chief executive of the US-based Symbolia: The Tablet Magazine of Illustrated Journalism

 STORYOLOGY

 WHO: Open to all storytellers from documentary makers … to journalists, authors and artists.

WHAT: Storyology: Ideas write now! A storytelling festival hosted by the Walkley Foundation.

WHEN: August 6 to 9 [www.storyology.org.au]

WHERE: Surry Hills, Sydney

VIPs include:

• Charles “Chuck” Lewis founder of one of the world’s biggest network of investigative reporters Center for Public Integrity, corruption watchdog Global Integrity and the Investigative News Network, a consortium of 60 non-profit news organisations
  • Gabriel Dance, of The Guardian in New York
  • BuzzFeed editorial director Scott Lamb
  • Media entrepreneur Erin Polgreen, editor of Symbolia: The Tablet Magazine of Illustrated Journalism

RSVP: http://www.storyology.org.au/administration/tickets

WALKLEY MEDIA TALKS

WHAT: Future storytelling platforms: What will they think of next? Explore these questions and more at the next Walkley media talk in Queensland. A panel will discuss some of the newest and most innovative storytelling platforms being used around Australia and will also discuss the challenges and advantages of the various new technologies in the application of journalism.

WHO: Anyone and everyone

WHERE: The Edge Auditorium, Stanley Place, Cultural Centre, Southbank, Brisbane

WHEN: 6pm June 19

RSVP:  www.wmtjun.eventbrite.com.au

VIPs include:

• Rae Allen, long serving ABC media reporter
• Sue McVay, News Ltd Queensland managing editor
• Stefan Armbruster, SBS news and current affairs Brisbane-based correspondent

The Walkley Foundation media talks are an ongoing program across Australia. To find out if there’s a free talk near you please visit http://www.walkleys.com/walkleymediatalks

The cuts come after Seven West Media, owners of West Australian Newspapers, posted a loss of $109.3 million for the first half of the financial year, compared to a $163 million net profit in the previous corresponding period.

The West Australian to cut 33 editorial staff

A statement from Seven West Media said there had to be changes made as it realigned itself to the future.

The statement read: “The media industry and the current economic climate have presented many challenges for WA Newspapers over the past few years, making it imperative that we review our operations and effectively manage our costs to ensure the long term stability, viability and growth of the business.”

The Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance said it feared the latest round of editorial redundancies would dramatically impact on the company’s quality of journalism.

MEAA federal secretary Chris Warren said the loss of senior staff would have grave ramifications for the newspaper.

“The West Australian is targeting its most senior and experienced editorial staff whose expertise is sorely needed in challenging times if the newspaper is going to continue to serve the interest of Western Australians with comprehensive, award-winning news coverage,” Mr Warren said.

“With The West Australian the only local daily newspaper, any loss of quality journalism from its pages means the entire Western Australian community suffers.”

The MEAA called on WA Newspapers CEO Chris Wharton to delay any redundancies in order to identify work cooperatively with staff and try to find a solution that worked for all parties.

“The path the company is taking, with such a crushing and heavy handed cost cutting approach will only dress-up the bottom-line in the short term,” Mr Warren said.

“The smart move is to engage with your employees and work together to build a better business.”

However, esteemed Fairfax journalist Stuart Washington, who last year won the Walkley for ‘Best Digital Journalism’, believes that sometimes data based journalism costs more than it is worth.

“Sky’s the limit for Political Gifts” Site on SMH.com.au

“People have been banging on for years about how data journalism will be the new face of journalism and it will change journalists’ lives and I think it has fallen over at every hurdle,” Mr Washington said.

“It takes hours and hours and lots of resources and sometimes when you come up with the results, do you get rewarded for the time you’ve spent? Sometimes I think no.”

Last year Mr Washington’s digital project saw top investigative Fairfax journalists partnering with a team of six University of Technology Sydney journalism students on a project called ‘Sky’s the limit for political gifts’.

The project created an online database that sorted through all of the political gifts received by politicians in Australia in order to bring some clarity surrounding the financial interest of our politicians.

Mr Washington said: “So collecting and aggregating that data is a very considerable process and the data itself is a very important point of journalism because that data really unpins the concept of democracy.”

“If the public does know about these conflicts of interest then they can truly understand their motivators when making certain decisions.”

It wasn’t just the digital aspect of the project that made it stand out from the crowd, it was also the fact that Fairfax decided to partner with UTS in order to give students hands on experience in a fast paced newsroom.

UTS student Francis Mao said: “It was a privilege to be involved – the journalists were so accommodating, welcoming and very generous. The journalists gave us all a lot of opportunities and they were really accessible.”

Ms Mao was intrigued by the idea that a partnership like this hadn’t been done before and was eager to do the research to unlock information that hadn’t been previously heard.

“This hadn’t been done before and the Sydney Morning Herald Journalists didn’t know what we’d find, we had niggling thoughts that there would be discrepancies,” she said.

Because a project like this had not been untaken before it was important to the Fairfax journalists to ensure that the interns were rewarded for all of their hard work, but no one was expecting to which level they would be acknowledged.

“The danger with these projects is that they become some unpaid labor force that just is being used to churn out meaningless numbers,” Mr Washington said.

“The thing that we have tried to be very careful about is that we tried to say that this project actually relied on these journalism students particular set of skills and that this project enhanced their learning and obviously the Walkley award was icing on the cake.”

“Can these projects flourish in a digital environment? Absolutely, they flourish and they thrive in a digital environment because there is that wonderful ubiquity of access.

“Are they something that [is] easy to do in the current media environment?

“No, they’re not.”

Data journalism on the rise

Although data journalism may not be easy it’s definitely on the rise.

The latest project released entitled “Detention Logs”  has three reputable online news sites, The Guardian Australia, The Global Mail and The New Matilda all taking part in an exclusive deal to use this projects data.

The project was started by three young freelance journalists who spent weeks on end collating the Department of Immigration records in order to bring some clarity to the issue of detention centres.

Luke Bacon, Lawrence Bull and Paul Farrell are the journalists behind the site and they hope the site acts as a model for other journalism projects.

The global media conglomerate has been divided into two new companies – a new entertainment company called 21st Century Fox which will keep the former News Corp’s television and film assets – and a new publishing company which will retain the News Corp name as well as its newspapers and magazines.

In a statement, Mr Murdoch said: “We are pleased that the proposals have been approved by an overwhelming majority of the outstanding shares and that our shareholders clearly recognise the anticipated benefits of the separation.”

‘‘We are on track to complete the separation on June 28 and look forward to launching two new industry leaders.”

The result was expected as the Murdoch family holds a majority of the voting shares.

At an investor day in New York recently, Mr Murdoch said he hoped to emulate the success of the original News Corp with the new publishing company.

“My goal for the new News Corp is to compress the success time line of the original News Corp from 60 years to 10 years,” Mr Murdoch said.

“You may think that’s crazy, too. But back in the 1950s we only had lead pencils and typewriters – today we have Wi-Fi, 4G and digital compression.”

Mr Murdoch will be the chairman of both companies and the CEO of the new entertainment company. His sons, James and Lachlan Murdoch, will sit on both boards.

Former Wall Street Journal managing editor Australian Robert Thomson will be the CEO of the new News Corp.