Secco to Go?

While Sydney Morning Herald Editor in Chief Mark Scott adamantly stuck to the story that economic conditions or some such furphy (not high executive pay packets) are the reason 60 editorial jobs are being cut from Fairfax on today's edition of AM, Crikey are reporting a much different story, including claims of a great leftie purge. In particular, it's claimed that yet another of my favourite Insiders lounge lizards, Mike Seccombe, has his head on the chopping block. This follows Max Walsh's opinion piece in that bastion of righter-than-thouness, The Bulletin, advising Fairfax that if it wanted to arrest its drop in sales, the first thing it needed to do was become more right wing. Yup - good one Maxie! Just what the Australian media landscape needs - another dull right wing newspaper just like all the others! (and come on - the SMH is hardly The Marxist Times anyway ...) Why is it, then, that the circulation of verbose, left-leaning publications like The New Yorker has actually improved over the past few years? Could it be that people actually want intelligent, challenging media rather than vapid tabloids divided into an ever increasing number of lifestyle sections? Nahhhh.

Those of you who visited the Sydney Morning Herald website yesterday will have seen the banner warning that some regular items were missing from the paper due to industrial action by the Media Entertainment & Arts Alliance. It will be interesting - and perhaps horrifying - to see how the issue develops. The last thing the Australian print media needs is a reduction in its already small political gene pool.