Call in the flacks, Fairfax has flunked its maths
It’s emerged after investigations by Fairfax staff that in the numbers put forward to rationalize job cuts at Fairfax, the number of tabloid equivalent pages that need to be subbed has been gravely underestimated.
The document was sent to Fairfax CEO Greg Hywood the morning that the announcement was made to staff confirming 82 subs would lose their job.
Despite Hywood’s PR-corrected letter claiming to have considered all contributions from staff and the union, the time-stamp on his letter tells otherwise.
But back to the numbers.
In Hywood’s calculations of pages that need to be sent to Pagemasters, the proposal set out that 900 first edition pages would need to be subbed from across The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald.
The reality is last week 1400 pages were subbed when all editions were counted, with about 1200 being a good average for most weeks.
Now not all these pages require a huge amount of resubbing, but combined it means another 100-200 pages of work that have not been accounted for.
That starts eating into saving estimations, never mind the increased pressure on Pagemasters that is already struggling under current arrangements that Fairfax has in place with it.
The news/sport and business subbing pool had to last week re-edit 300 pages supplied by Pagemasters, as they were deemed unfit for publication without further work.
Sounds like a shambles. I wonder what Sue Cato has to say about it.