ERROL PARKER | Editor-at-large | Contact
To his shock this morning, an ageing Fairfax board member is staring down the barrel of having to own the same BMW X5 for another year today as he received a first-round redundancy offer.
Andrew Macintosh, part of the crumbling media organisation’s senior leadership team, told our reporters that he wasn’t concerned about Fairfax’s future as whenever this type of thing happens, they tend to force the junior and lowest-paid staff out the door first.
However, this time it’s different.
“We don’t have any young people to sack anymore,” he said.
“Which means people like me are in danger of losing our jobs. What am I going to tell my wife? That she’s going to have to settle for Bali this year? I took her to Florence for her birthday last March! We live a certain lifestyle that I’m not sure a job in media can sustain anymore.”
What isn’t on the card, according to Mr Macintosh is a change of office to a lesser postcode or any sacrifices made to personal luxuries or executive perks.
But that hasn’t stopped chatter down on the bottom floor where content creators and the company’s last remaining journalists have already begun ripping the copper wiring out of the floor and ceilings.
At the Sydney Morning Herald, the paper’s Peter Hartcher has already stripped an impressive 400m of wiring from the roof while he defends the pile with a steak knife he found in the office kitchen.
The offices of the Brisbane Times have already been set alight by a board member, who hopes to collect an insurance payout.
While at The Age, for journalists and a sales manager were shot to death trying to prevent a private security contractor tasked with removing the paper’s Nespresso machine.
More to come.
