Fairfax Threatens Striking Journos With The Sack As Takeover Bid Sours

Fairfax Threatens Striking Journos With The Sack As Takeover Bid Sours
B&T Magazine
By B&T Magazine



Fairfax Media bosses have apparently threatened to sack any striking journalist who uses their own personal social media account to denigrate the company.

The threat to staff, who’ve been on strike since Thursday following news of 125 cuts to newsrooms, comes as staff issued a “no confidence” motion in the publisher’s bosses.

Apparently, striking scribes have also attacked colleagues who’d chosen to remain at work over the week-long stoppage and they too have been put on notice.

Yesterday, B&T ran a report that Fairfax CEO Greg Hywood had been rumoured to have been paid as much as $7.2 million in salary and bonuses in 2016, enough to employ 57 staff the striking journalists claim.

Meanwhile, private equity firm TPG’s takeover offer for the company appears to have once again stalled.

TPG apparently won’t increase its offer of $2.2 billion for the company’s mastheads and Domain real estate site.

Fairfax shareholders would consider the offer if it included all of Fairfax assets including its New Zealand operations, Macquarie Radio assets and SVOD Stan. Shareholders believe if the company was sold as a whole, and not broken in two as TPG wants, its value is more like $3.1 billion. An offer TPG has apparently rejected.

In yesterday’s no-confidence motion, Fairfax spokesman Miki Perkins said: “Greg Hywood, you have presided over a pernicious culture of executive neglect.

“Our 150-year-old mastheads are on their knees after years of cost-cutting and private equity companies are circling.”

However, Fairfax staff have apparently been using social media for good, encouraging readers to subscribe and advertisers not to abandon the titles to shore up the company’s future.




Latest News

Sydney Comedy Festival: Taking The City & Social Media By Storm
  • Media

Sydney Comedy Festival: Taking The City & Social Media By Storm

Sydney Comedy Festival 2024 is live and ready to rumble, showing the best of international and homegrown talent at a host of venues around town. As usual, it’s hot on the heels of its big sister, the giant that is the Melbourne International Comedy Festival, picking up some acts as they continue on their own […]

Global Marketers Descend For AANA’s RESET For Growth
  • Advertising

Global Marketers Descend For AANA’s RESET For Growth

The Australian Association of National Advertisers (AANA) has announced the final epic lineup of local and global marketing powerhouses for RESET for Growth 2024. Lead image: Josh Faulks, chief executive officer, AANA  Back in 2000, a woman with no business experience opened her first juice bar in Adelaide. The idea was brilliantly simple: make healthy […]