The Big Merger: A critical perspective
On Wednesday Nine announced its bombshell plan to merge with Fairfax media. When a group of journalists gather just days later at the Storyology 2018 festival, it’s a topic on many people’s lips.
Sydney Morning Herald photojournalist Nick Moir and independent journalist Bri Lee are both very concerned about the upcoming changes.
Bri Lee values a wide diversity of news at different ends of the independent-commercial spectrum.
“What is happening with Nine and Fairfax is really alarming and really upsetting, but ultimately not surprising,” Bri said.
“It’s a chasm that is growing between the really big fish, the big media companies, and citizenship journalism, indie press, blogs and social media as a source of news.
“Fairfax was, for a really long time sitting between those two. It wasn’t this behemoth that Nine was, but it was better than citizenship journalism. It’s almost like the wealth gap where the rich are getting richer.”
Up until the Fairfax-Nine announcement Bri was happy to see the growth of voices in the industry and independent news.
“What [publisher] Sam Cooney is doing with The Lifted Brow and Brow Books in Melbourne is a really great example of an independent magazine with a really strong growth,” Bri said.
But there are some greater issues playing on the media environment.
“People don’t trust the news anymore, full stop,” Bri said.
“It’s really upsetting that at the time that people have the most access to news they do not trust any information.”
Often people are attributing the decline in the trust consumers place in the media to Donald Trump but Bri disagrees.
“Nothing is purely Donald Trump because Donald Trump was elected. These ideas and suspicions and the narrow-mindedness that got Donald Trump in are now the things proliferating after his election,” Bri said.
Nick Moir shares some different concerns that are more practical about the merger and thinks that Nine and Fairfax could collaborate to produce stronger Sunday news programs.
“It would have allowed for a number of our top reporters to naturally flow over into their TV, back and forth, that would have really worked because they work with Four Corners well,” Nick said.
“I don’t think in the short term there would be any quality issues at the Sydney Morning Herald or The Age.
“My issue would be financial things going wrong at the Nine side and then that impacting us. But I can’t fight that fight. All I can do is looking after the photographers.”
He said he is excited about the new staff.
“On the ground, as far as the cameramen go, I am going to give them a hug,” said Nick. “We are brothers now.”
