This is an interesting development, following the company's decision to launch a Brisbane-centric Web site, which employs 14 journalists. If they keep this up, who knows what they might do?
Imagine: a dedicated arts Web site with a team of arts reporters and critics. Which would mean more book news and reviews. The Sydney Morning Herald, Fairfax' Sydney broadsheet, already contains a books page. But it's not updated every day. The only other Australian books pages that compete belong to The Age (Fairfax' Melbourne broadsheet) and The Australian, News Corp's flagship.
Mike van Niekerk, the online editor-in-chief of Fairfax Digital, said that the new websites represented additional points of entry for people to Fairfax Media.
Let's hope Mike sees the light.
I'm not sure what's happened, but newspaper/magazine publishers are just cottoning onto the fact that online/digital is the way to go. I work for a magazine publisher here in the UK (which is owned by Time Warner) and there's a concerted push this year to make everything web-orientated, mainly because print publications are taking a very serious nosedive re: circulation and revenue right across the board. I hate to be a doom-monger but I am convinced that print magazines are definitely on the way out...
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