EXCLUSIVE: Fairfax Metro Media is conducting a far-reaching review of its senior and middle management ranks in the newly merged digital and metropolitan masthead operation with up to 24 positions under the spotlight.
Jack Matthews, chief executive of the new division, told AdNews the top priority in his new role was to “figure out who the best people for the right jobs are" as part of an ambitious effort to implement much of Fairfax Media’s new corporate strategy by year’s end.
The strategic overhaul, approved by the Fairfax board late last year, includes dumping the company’s historical focus on “geography and platforms” to create “discreet” audience and content clusters across its newspapers, websites, mobile devices and apps.
“We’re looking at less than two dozen and probably around a dozen positions but that is an artificial number,” Matthews said. “We’re not necessarily talking about just the top jobs. It will be the next level down – that’s really where a lot of work gets done. My father was a general in the Army and he always said the Army runs on its Sergeant Majors, not its Generals.”
As part of the review process, Matthew’s division, which includes Fairfax Digital and metropolitan mastheads, The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age, is looking to appoint a new group sales director to lead the Fairfax charge into cross-platform selling. Matthews said there were “lots of good people” inside the company but a broader external search was also underway.
“The sales director role is transformational,” he said. “The main thing we need is very strong leadership skills because they have to lead what has been disparate sales teams, some of which have lived under commercial pressure.
"The new person needs to take them to a new promised land. I’m pretty optimistic we will get someone good and I think if we can tell the Fairfax story more effectively than its been told in recent times, Fairfax can be seen as a really great place where people will want to work.”
Matthews also signalled there were encouraging signs of a pick-up in the online display market for March after an unexpected collapse in demand in January and February for some of the major online portals.
“I’m not sure what happened in January and February but clearly we did not do as well as we would have expected online,” he said. “It appears to be coming back in March.”
Matthews would not comment on advertising demand for the metro mastheads, which Fairfax said two weeks ago had been hit by a slump from retail advertisers. “I’ve been listening for less than a week,” he said. “I wouldn’t be confident about having any views about what is going on in print advertising.”
See AdNews cover story this Friday (11 March) on the hard sell ahead for Fairfax’s new regime.
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