Fairfax plans to go digital-only

AdNews reports Fairfax CEO Greg Hywood said the Australian media company will move to a digital-only model.

Hywood doesn’t put a date on it but says the move will be in the future and only if print publishing becomes unprofitable.

This makes perfect sense even if there’s little evidence of other newspaper publishers making a successful move to digital.

Hobson's choice

Media companies have little choice, it’s either shrink to a digital core and hope the mastheads and brands continue to carry weight with readers, or hang around for the inevitable day when the print presses stop running.

Of course, anyone reading this site will have known that was true a decade ago.

Hywood says Fairfax’s digital strategy is ahead of the company’s competitors and ahead of most traditional media companies around the world. He is only part right. Fairfax’s most serious competition comes from media companies that were born digital.

Speaking of businesses born digital, Fairfax’s strategy looks curious in the light of its part sale of the TradeMe auction site. TradeMe is digital only. You might expect it to sit at the core of a digital-only publishing business. Likewise, you might also expect Fairfax to extend TradeMe's reach to Australia.

At the same time, Fairfax needs to up its game with digital advertising. Many of the ads on show at the site are low-value Google ads. Rather than display ads that deliver little value, it could direct news readers to the more lucrative TradeMe site.