News location:

Canberra Today 24°/28° | Friday, March 29, 2024 | Digital Edition | Crossword & Sudoku

Correction: Not two, four editors to go at “Times”

ROD Quinn, “The Canberra Times” editor, has strenuously denied yesterday’s “CityNews” story that the incumbents of the literary editor and the arts editor positions at the ailing paper have been offered redundancies. 

And he’s right, if not a little disingenuous. They haven’t.

However, a “CityNews” deep throat on the staff reports that the positions of literary editor, arts editor, features editor and day editor have been deemed “surplus” to requirements and are to be axed from the organisational chart by September as Fairfax consolidates its national editorial functions.

Whether the current incumbents of those positions, who have been told of the impending changes, or other staff members are made redundant remains unclear, but there will be the long-anticipated “negotiated redundancies”. The effect of losing such a concentrated level of creative journalistic input at one fell swoop may test the paper’s ability to sustain a “local” flavour in the feature and arts pages.

Last month, the paper’s Sydney-based owner Fairfax announced a major rescaling of its publishing business with wholesale staff cuts and a restructure of newsrooms in Canberra, Sydney and Melbourne. The editors of “The Sydney Morning Herald” and “The Age” have subsequently left the business.

Yesterday “CityNews” reported that the literary editor and arts editor currently held, respectively, by Gia Metherell (also a union representative) and Diana Streak were to be offered redundancies.  In a call to “CityNews” general manager Greg Jones this morning Quinn denied this.

Locally, morale at the paper is believed to be subdued. A staff member of the “The Canberra Times” tweeted “CityNews” recently saying an announcement regarding the editorial future of  the paper was to have been made last week. As this week ends, there is still silence from management. A caller to a senior by-lined writer at “The Times” yesterday was told them “no-one’s telling us anything” and that it was a “dreadful place to be”.

Long-time book reviewers, award-winning Canberra novelist Marion Halligan and former head of the ANU library Colin Steele, have publicly expressed disappointment at the suggested demise of the paper’s local literary reviewing function and its effect on Canberra writers.

 

Who can be trusted?

In a world of spin and confusion, there’s never been a more important time to support independent journalism in Canberra.

If you trust our work online and want to enforce the power of independent voices, I invite you to make a small contribution.

Every dollar of support is invested back into our journalism to help keep citynews.com.au strong and free.

Become a supporter

Thank you,

Ian Meikle, editor

Share this

One Response to Correction: Not two, four editors to go at “Times”

John Parhelion says: 15 July 2012 at 5:46 pm

This is a symptom of the way the arts are regarded in Australia. Politicians expect Australian artists to push the boundaries of creativity with little support. Now the chance to promote performances, exhibitions, productions will be left to the editors and whim of the Sydney/Melbourne arts desks who already demonstrate that they don’t give a stuff about anything ore anyone outside of their immediate circles. Very sad but up to par.

Reply

Leave a Reply

Related Posts

Follow us on Instagram @canberracitynews