Inside Fairfax

Since the launch of The Guide, Good Living and Metro in the Herald in the early ’80s the success of sections has gone ahead in leaps and bounds.
Today there are 16 sections and, on average, at least one supplement a week, plus occasional specials such as The Shed, Scope and Eco. They drive circulation and revenue for the whole paper but this is threatened by the proposed redundancies.

In the past three years new sections have appeared: Radar, Health & Science and the three regional Domains. There have been redesigns for all sections (sometimes more than one), including an overhaul of Spectrum.
In the same period writer/production budgets have been cut and staff have left or taken redundancies but the quality has remained only just.
We are at the stage where any more cuts will mean standards and quality are threatened. The professionalism of the editorial staff means they will fight to maintain standards but something will snap. Probably sections will fail to meet deadlines or worse. Staff fear that some sections will close.
Many ask: why close a section that readers like and is vital to the whole paper? It’s madness.
There are 32 subeditors in sections, about half are casual or part-time. There is a freeze on replacing subs as they leave. When staff are sick or take leave, there are no replacements.
The sections have an editor each, and there is a pool of 18 staff writers, some who are part-time.
In a nutshell, titles battle on with a production crew of one or two and hope to get a designer for two or three days a week.
One area of concern is that a vital link in the editing process, check-subbing, is increasingly being circumvented due to lack of staff. This means that stories are written, sub-edited then read on proof. The check sub would normally read and correct the story after the subeditor a common process at major publications around the world.
Another area to feel the cuts is in design and illustration. Designers are trained in graphic arts and design. They build the pages, source photos, graphics and artwork and work closely with section editors and subeditors.
There are 13 designers and one graphic artist. There are two illustrators, but they also do work for news, sport and business. We also have just two part-time stylists, who work closely with photographers and editors.
The photographers, a vital part of the whole newspaper and especially sections, have been culled over the past three years, leaving just seven photographers to work on sections. But they also work for magazines and marketing.
To organise a picture, a section editor has to arrange it days in advance and cross their fingers.
A common complaint from section editors is that their contributors’ and freelancers’ pay rate has been frozen for years. It sits at about 50 cents a word, no increase for about 10 years and well below what some other publications pay. A lucky few get paid more but not many.
The very profitable real-estate sections are feeling the pinch. Despite the recent launches of Domain East, North and Inner West the staff numbers have not increased. There are plans for more Domain “regional” sections but staff are already battling.
Management has tried many ways to shoehorn sections into the paper or tackle bottlenecks at the print works at Chullora. The latest tactic is not to include Radar in country papers.
The company talks of the need to cut staff and costs in answer to falling ad revenues and yet even the advertising salespeople will agree that it is the editorial (and its now-threatened quality and integrity) that attracts the advertisers.
In some cases it is claimed an editorial shoulder in a classifieds section can attract advertising earning tens of thousands of dollars.
These redundancies will mean editorial quality will suffer to the detriment of the paper, and crucially, for the reading public.