Interview: 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.
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….full interview with the audio here

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