We’ve watched with interest, 24 hours of comment and self-interest over the resignation of the Fairfax Media chief executive.
The story depends on who’s telling it, but it seems McCarthy was unwilling to make a commitment to sticking around for another three-to-five years of corporate change at the once-hallowed publisher.
Who’d blame him?
You can count on the Murdoch press not to favour Fairfax needlessly, so I’ll quote from them:
‘McCarthy was “right man, wrong time”’ says the lead in an ‘Australian’ page dedicated to the ‘turmoil’.
And elsewhere in the issue, (Martin Littler of Colonial First State Global Asset Management) “a very good chief executive when it actually comes to running the business…may well have grown tired with the other stuff that goes with the job, such as the song and dance shows that happen on investor days”.
Grown tired of it, more like.
Along with many others of John Brehmer Fairfax’s men, McCarthy was drawn into Fairfax Media with the Rural Press merger of 2007, and it was his careful financial stewardship which enamoured investors of the deal.
But four years is a long time for a company which has gone through a succession of chief executives in recent years: John B has jumped ship, and former grocery chairman Roger Corbett is now very clearly at the helm. While he was never chairman, many saw Fairfax’s board presence – and substantial shareholding – as significant… leadership from someone with some newspaper blood in his veins and a passion for the business after years of little more than career managers and institutional investors.
It’s the big difference between Fairfax Media and its major competitor, News Limited where both the local subsidiary and of course, its parent are headed by passionate publishers. That and an ownership structure which allows leaders to stay on course.
So let’s say ‘thanks, mate’ to Brian McCarthy for the decades he put into Rural Press and for his efforts and stewardship through difficult GFC years of Fairfax Media… the ‘wrong time’ mentioned above.
That said, there are times when Fred Hilmer’s record looks increasingly good: Yesterday’s papers (at least the Murdoch ones) were full of the woes of ‘The Age’ during McCarthy’s watch, but the key issues seem to have been that management kidded itself that it could afford to spend surplus classified advertising revenues in areas which did not contribute to its generation.
The famous ‘rivers of gold’ have long since dried up, but – with the ‘Melbourne Weekly’ which it bought from Eric Beecher in 2003 – ‘The Age’ shared a near monopoly on the city’s metro property advertising market. That it should be in trouble when that was so inevitably upset should be no surprise.
Hilmer, of course, was responsible for building the foundations of an online business which now looks exceedingly good on the company’s balance sheet. Better than it should if costs for shared resources such as editorial content were apportioned differently, perhaps.
The history of that period records differences of opinion about whether print and online businesses should be run separately, and the role editors should have in that. Opinions on the fundamentals have also changed: Print and online newsrooms should be separate (shouldn’t); websites can’t break news first (can); readers won’t pay for non-commodity content (will); journalists don’t make good business managers (sometimes do, look at Alan Kohler for example).
And after spells with Steve Bracks and Victorian tourism, the man who fell out with Hilmer over how the key Fairfax media platforms should be managed, former journalist Greg Hywood is back to run the show.
We look forward to a passion for publishing and a decent level of shareholder support, and wish him well in what McCarthy probably admits was a pretty thankless and near-impossible job, even at a reported $3 million.
And good luck to you too Brian, wherever the next port of call is!