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syme
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Related:
Rural Press
INL
Hollinger
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overview
This profile deals with the Fairfax and Syme groups, united
in 1972.
It covers -
There
is a complementary profile on the Rural
Press group, acquired through a friendly takeover
in December 2006.
 introduction
At its height the Fairfax empire encompassed television
and radio stations in Australia, magazines (including
the UK Spectator), rural and suburban newspapers,
Australia's major financial newspaper (Australian Financial
Review) and broadsheets (Sydney Morning Herald
and Melbourne Age).
It was dismembered last decade after Warwick Fairfax took
on too much debt—what's an extra hundred million
or so—in buying out family members and the public.
Rival publishers such as Packer
and Black have bought and then
sold stakes; what's left of the empire is now owned by
the usual fund managers and small investors rather than
people with ink in their blood.
Amid recurrent speculation of a bid by O'Reilly
family interests in April 2003 Fairfax announced a $1
billion deal to acquire most of the publishing interests
of New Zealand's Independent Newspapers Ltd (INL),
at that time around 50% owned by News.
The deal was approved by Australian and New Zealand competition
authorities in mid-2003 and adds 80 newspaper and magazine
titles to Fairfax's operations, including The Dominion
Post, The Press, Sunday News, The Sunday Star-Times,
seven regional dailies, 61 community publications, 13
magazine titles, commercial printing interests and the
Gordon & Gotch distribution business.
In August 2006 IDG agreed to acquire
Fairfax's British assets (including MIS UK and
the Market Base database). In return Fairfax Business
Media (FBM) gained a licence to publish IDG's global IT
content and mastheads in Singapore, Malaysia and New Zealand,
along with IDG's circulation information and infrastructure
in those markets.
As part of industry realignment in late 2006 - driven
by anticipation of new media laws and private equity deals
in Australia and elsewhere - both News
and Stokes acquired stakes in
Fairfax. In December 2006 Fairfax announced a $2.9 billion
friendly takeover of Rural Press group, diluting those
stakes and creating a $9 billion print and digital media
group, the largest in Australia and New Zealand.
In July 2007 Macquarie Media
and Fairfax Media announced a joint $1.35 billion acquisition
of Southern Cross Broadcasting. The expectation was that
Macquarie Media would buy Southern Cross for its Channel
Ten affiliate stations (in regional
Queensland, NSW and Victoria) and Seven
Network affiliates in Darwin and Tasmania. Macquarie would
on-sell to Fairfax the Southern Cross metropolitan radio
operations (including the 2UE and 3AW talkback stations
plus talkback and music stations in Brisbane and Perth).
history
A chronology of the group is here.
holdings
An indication of current holdings is here.
studies
The major works are Gavin Souter's two studies of the
Sydney Morning Herald and the Fairfax family: Company
of Heralds and Heralds & Angels (Melbourne:
Melbourne Uni Press 1981 and 1991). There's no comparable
study of the Syme family, builders of The Age in
Melbourne - subsequently acquired by Fairfax. Rivalry
with the Packers and Murdochs
features in most studies of those families.
RB Walker's The Newspaper Press in New South Wales,
1803-1920 (Sydney: Sydney Uni Press 1976) and Yesterday's
News, A History of the Newspaper Press in New South Wales
from 1920 to 1945 (Sydney: Sydney Uni Press 1980)
are also valuable. Among works by and regarding Fairfax
journalists see Voice of the Thunderer: The Journalism
of HG Kippax (Canberra: Pandanus Books 2006) by Harry
Heseltine.
The Fairfax dynasty's disintegration is portrayed in James
Fairfax's elegiac My Regards To Broadway (Sydney:
Imprint 1992), The Man Who Couldn't Wait: Warwick
Fairfax's Folly & the Bankers Who Backed Him (Port
Melbourne: Heinemann 1991) by V J Carroll and Operation
Dynasty (Elwood: Greenhouse 1989) by Trevor Sykes. A
useful point of reference is Marie Brenner's House
of Dreams (London: Michael Joseph 1989) on meltdown,
US style. For the aftermath (and corporate incomprehension)
see Fred Hilmer's The Fairfax Experience (Milton:
Wiley 2007)
Paul Chadwick's Media Mates: Carving Up Australia's
Media (South Melbourne: Macmillan 1989) and Allan
Brown's Commercial Media in Australia (St Lucia:
Uni of Qld Press 1986) are of value as an introduction
to the dynamics of media regulation and concentration
in Australia during the 1970s and 80s. There is a
more recent account in Public Voices, Private Interests:
Australia's Media Policy (Sydney: Allen & Unwin 1995)
edited by Jennifer Craik & Albert Moran.
Trevor Barr's thoughtful Newmedia.com.au: The Changing
Face of Australia's Media and Communications (St Leonards:
Allen & Unwin 2000) is essential reading in understanding
the interaction between politicians, bureaucrats, business,
consumers and technology. Another perspective is provided
by AFR journalist Mark Westfield's blow by blow
account in The Gatekeepers: The Global Media Battle
to control Australia's Pay TV (Annandale: Pluto Press
2000).
There has been no major study of Gordon & Gotch, the
newspaper, book and magazine distributor whose New Zealand
operation was acquired in 2003 as part of the INL deal.
Denis Cryle's 1996 paper
Culture and Commerce: Gordon and Gotch Ltd in Australia
1890-1940 is suggestive.
Rural
Press
Most of the extended family took Warwick's money and ran.
James Fairfax for example has continued a career as an
art patron and philanthropist. The 'John' Fairfax branch
of the family took a number of minor titles along with
the loot and emerged as a major force in provincial publishing.
As of 2006 its Rural Press (discussed in more detail here)
controlled over 170 rural and regional titles in Australia,
New Zealand and the US, along with minor broadcasting
holdings and the Canberra Times (CT),
acquired from Seven television network proprietor Kerry
Stokes.
Rural was acquired by Fairfax in a December 2006 friendly
takeover, with the Fairfax family having a stake of around
13% in the merged group (worth over $1.1 billion).
INL
In 2003 Fairfax acquired most newspaper and magazine operations
of INL (formerly Independent Newspapers Ltd), the New
Zealand subsidiary of Murdoch's News group.
This site features a separate profile
on INL.
 next
page (Syme and the Age)
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