Fairfax Media rather needs to be congratulated for the announcement it has made recently. It is not really about shrinking jobs but about a leap towards becoming a digital media company. Unfortunately, there is little detail available about the transformation process that is primarily going to take place during the next two years. Cutting jobs, tabloidization and winding up of printing plants hardly need any attention. This is the slash and burn ritual initiated by accountants masquerading as strategic leaders.  Will it guarantee a successful “metered” model? No. Simple as that.

In the mid 1990s, newspaper organisations were uneasy about the value of the Internet whilst they did not want to appear lagging behind other organisations in adopting this technology. Jon Katz argued that a lot of newspaper organisations were competing with each other for a presence on the Web without considering the consequences.  Similarly, Pogash stated that newspaper organisations invested large amounts of money on their online versions without actually knowing how to make a profit out of that. Pogash added that online versions offered free content in the absence of an online subscription and with no substantive information available about its effect on the circulation figures of their print editions.

On the other hand, Dueze argued that ‘online journalism’ was established distinctly from the traditional print journalism with the help of features like ‘hypertextuality, multimediality, and interactivity’. Dueze added that such features ended up ‘(significantly) empowering the online users’. However, it was still not clear during those days if online versions had had clear strategies. In fact, the traditional newspapers  were successful in carrying over their distinct features on their online versions but the features selected vary among newspapers and lacked an impact.

Nevertheless, McLuhan’s rear-view mirror philosophy started emerging from the online versions of the newspapers. According to McLuhan, while exploring the possibilities for the future, we refer to the past. In this instance, majority of newspapers came up with versions that retained the configuration of their print editions. Lasica identified such versions as digital editions. He added that there were 90 newspapers around the globe that came up with digital editions, which were the replicas of their traditional newspaper edition. Vin Crosbie, a newspaper consultant quoted by Lasica, claimed that such replicas presented an online edition in the same context that a print newspaper is presented. The ‘readers feel more at home’ due to similarity of the replica with the traditional newspaper. Crosbie added that the replica downloaded on a computer in one go freed the reader from the requirement of remaining online.

With the arrival of smartphones the novelty worn off. People became mobile consumers with information overload. Media could not maintain its pace with the changing technology despite Boynton suggesting that new media might actually be the salvation of old media. That was not to happen. In this day and age you become technologically outdated the moment you buy a gadget. Hence the low value of printing plants to your arsenal.

Is “metered” model going to save the fully digital avatar of Fairfax. I am not convinced. This model will not even recover wages of whatever the skeletal staff is left working in a 24×7 environment. Even a corner blogger has the potential of seriously denting this “metered” model. Fairfax needs to learn something from history as mentioned above. This is Web 2.0 for newspapers too. Let me provide an analogy here. This “metered” model is akin to a pre-paid service of a Telco. No Telco can survive only on the basis of pre-paid customers. To attract post-paid customers, Fairfax needs to re-imagine everything within the realm of Web 2.0 and project some sort of post-paid “Gateway” model covering the whole lot from front-end to back-end.

Fairfax has embarked on an imposing journey with its latest announcement. Only the road-map is still blurred.