Fairfax’s announcement this week to ditch sub-editors at its major newspapers has outraged many, but the former editor of one of the UK’s leading tabloids says the move is hardly surprising.Fairfax will cut sub-editing jobs at The Age and Sydney Morning Herald and instead outsource the work to Pagemasters, a subsidiary of AAP.The company’s newsrooms have seen hundreds of job cuts in recent years, but it seems journalists are not prepared to lose on this one without a fight – they are headed to the industrial mediator and are threatening strike action.Roy Greenslade, a columnist with the UK’s Guardian and the former editor of The Daily Mirror, says newspapers are dying and it is no surprise Fairfax is making this move to cut costs.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2011/05/06/3209485.htm