MocoInterview: Jack Matthews, CEO of Fairfax Digital, Australia

[by James Pearce] While in Australia last month, I interviewed Jack Matthews, globetrotter and newly-appointed CEO of Fairfax Digital. Fairfax is one of the top two newspaper publishers in Australia (behind News Corp) and has more of a “broadsheet mentality” than its competitors, in a general sense. The SMH was my paper of choice when I lived in Sydney. Fairfax Digital handles the online side of the company, republishing articles from the papers (if the writers of those articles choose to put them online, which is interesting) as well as putting up pieces from its own team of dedicated journalists. “We have more journalists in Fairfax than any other publisher in Australia, and I think everybody would realise that is a really significant asset for Fairfax as a whole,” said Jack. “In terms of the paper that allows Fairfax to create its own news rather than rely on wires.”
Jack was hired at the beginning of April, and the fact that he comes from a Pay TV background has started speculation that Fairfax planned to get back into the TV business, albeit via an online strategy. Jack claimed that he was hired to expand Fairfax’s digital operations rather than begin them. However, the plan is to move the various Fairfax sites to the next level, “which mean richer content, more video centric, more community oriented and less strictly informational”. This will be partly on the classifieds part of Fairfax’s operations, which have managed to carve a significant slice out of a market that is now mature, but will also extend into some “uncharted teritory”…Jack declined to give details.
For a while I’ve thought that newspapers which rely on their own reporting don’t have anything to fear from new media because it will allow them to distribute their content to more people, whereas newspapers that rely mostly on syndicated content are going to have problems as that content becomes ubiquitous online, and as some of the wire services (such as Reuters) move to include a direct-to-consumer model. I feel validated that Jack has the same opinion: “Newspaper companies which realise they have an incredible ability to generate valuable content and distribute that across a variety of platforms, I think those newspaper companies are actually really well positioned,” he said. “Newspaper companies have historically been seen as a distribution company whereas I think increasingly they’ll be seen as a content company.”
Fairfax Digital LogoFairfax also plans to move into the mobile space as part of its plan to make its content available to people at all times of the day. “”If you look at the cycle of news during the day, people get their news and information from different sources as the day goes on. The first thing in the morning they read the newspaper, they might see a bit of the mornign show on tv, on the commute to work it’s going to be some sort of mobile device or radio they’re going to get their information, while they’re at work they’re going to be on the internet, when they get home it’s going to be probably TV, and then maybe the internet. And I think mobile, in that cycle, is a really important part to get breaking news because people are mobile,” said Jack. “Our strategy is to make sure that we have the capability of delivering our services across any of that day part, which by necessity means that we need to have a pretty strong mobile strategy.” He said that a strong market driver was the regulatory environment that determined how carriers make their money, which will in turn determine how content providers get their revenue.
Of course, this also ties in with the youth sector, who’s “entertainment life largely revolves around their mobile device”, the mobile and youth strategies are different but linked, according to Jack.
Another major part of digital media — and one that is often cited as a threat to mainstream media — is citizen journalism. Jack objected to the idea that citizen journalism needs to be viewed as either a threat or an opportunity, claiming it is something that is just going to happen (indeed, is happening) so companies have to deal with that. “Citizen journalism is on the way. A video of this newsworthy thing appearing online within a couple of hours of it happening, well, that’s a really exciting thing, and it’s something that’s unique to online journalism,” he said. There are technical issues which have to be decided, such how it plays, as well as how open the system should be. “The online world has removed a whole lot of chokepoints on news and information, and it’s created a whole new thing of veracity of information, and misinformation of course,” said Jack.
As part of its move into social media Fairfax Digital is getting heavily into blogs and is developing the ability for people to upload content related to an article. There’s also the idea of “related to” in terms of video, giving people the opportunity to go deeper into a story or get background. “”Increasingly with broadband you’ll be able to take the next step and go get video content that isn’t directly related to a story but is related to a story,” said Jack. “So, in entertainment, if there’s a story of how Britney Spears is fat and hates her husband, and maybe there’s a story that’s an interview with her, but then maybe you can go and get a bunch of interviews with Britney Spears…and obviously that’s a reasonably low-end example.”
For the moment Fairfax has no plans to expand overseas, apart from the international aspects of online content. In fact, Jack believes it is a bad idea for companies to move out of their own patch, claiming that most of them fail because “they always underestimate the cultural differences”.
The interview also covered the Australian media habit of TV stations joining with major media portals to go online (“The tie-ups between TV and portals are good for the TV guys, not sure if it’s good for the online guys. TV is cyclical depending on what is “in”), search (“Search is here. We need to have a search strategy and it can’t be a defensive strategy”) and Japan (“a lot of it is frankly cultural as opposed to technological or regulatory…it’s hard to put my finger on it, it’s just such a different place”).
mp3logo1.gif You can download the audio of the interview here (8.19 MB, 35 mins).
Or you can stream it here … click on the arrow:

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