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.
