They sacked Mike Carlton on Friday from his regular weekend column gig with the SMH because he refused to submit a column for publication while the journalists and editorial staff were on strike (in response to the announcement that 5% of the workforce were being made redundant).
No doubt Fairfax were entirely within their legal rights to do so (I’m sure that his contract specifies that his column should be submitted come hell or high water) but they could easily have dealt with this in a manner which acknowledges that there is a valid principle at stake in his decision to not cross the picket line (unlike our NSW State Premier Morris Iemma, who did write a column for the SMH over the weekend). Why not penalise him by simply not paying him his fee for the week etc (not like the man is starving, is it?). It all has a touch of the pour encourager les autres about it, non?
Big Swing with the Clue Bat here, you bean-counters at Fairfax: the reason that the corporatised media arms are losing eyeballs to other sources of information, as information and opinion is made more widely available from many different sources, is the perception that you can’t be trusted. The more corporatised a news organisation becomes the fewer ethical principles it observes in its news coverage, and thus it is judged less reliable in respect of providing accurate and objective information. Sacking people for taking principled stands only makes the corporation look more unprincipled and thus unreliable, therefore losing more eyeballs.
What a sad dwindling saga of a once fine publication.
Categories: ethics & philosophy, media, technology
Privacy, Transparency, Surveillance and Sousveillance 
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Hoyden About Town 
Don’t be too hard on old Morris. If only as Premier he had better media access and a place, like a large building say around Macquarie Street, where he could his say.
Seriously, what a joke, including Farrell’s follow up piece. If this is a sign of things to come, farewell the SMH. No more analysis just recycled media releases.
Reminds of a pet hate. The regular column in the Sun Herald where they run an op-ed from a “person of influence.” FFS, how about a person of not so much influence who has something more interesting to say that the usual cliched political rhetoric.
Lotsa good goss in Crikey re what is happening at Fairfax. Management seems to have underestimated the outcry that sacking Carlton has had. After sports, his Saturday musings were next in line to be read before diving into politics.
H-, as they say, -eh.
Absolutely bonkers decision, no matter how vindictive some guy wearing French cuffs was feeling.