November 27th became another milestone in the Fairfax Media and Nine Entertainment which has now been given court approval though the former CEO of Domain Antony Catalano, is understood to still be considering an appeal to the full federal court.
If that appeal is dropped or is determined to be unsuccessful, the merger will formally take place on 7 December.
The Guardian today reported that "Nine has said it intends to continue publishing the Sydney Morning Herald, the Age and the Australian Financial Review as well as the websites, but it is likely that regional publications and the New Zealand assets will be sold off or closed." ACCC Chair Rod Sims said of the merger “While there are important barriers to building trust and scale, significant new entry into the Australian online news market has already occurred and made a noticeable difference. Due to the difficulties in monetising journalism online, however, it is hard to predict the future landscape with any certainty.” In the ACCC media release of 8 November 2018 they stated: When the ACCC considers mergers, it compares the future with the merger to the future without the merger. Many submissions argued that this proposed merger will change Fairfax’s culture and result in less investment in journalism. In particular, market participants raised concerns about losing a brand that is known for independent investigative journalism. The ACCC understood these concerns. “Media markets are highly dynamic. The shift to online and the huge reduction in hard-copy classified advertising revenue have changed the media landscape irrevocably,” ACCC Chair Rod Sims said.. The impact of some of these changes is demonstrated in the approximate halving of advertising revenue from Fairfax’s digital and print mastheads in the last five years,” Mr Sims said. Lenore Taylor, Editor of The Guardian writes in her piece With Fairfax gone, the need for diversity in Australia's media is greater than ever she writes that considered observers remain desperately concerned about how long the Fairfax journalistic culture can survive. "And as academic Margaret Simons has pointed out, the “other players” in the news market are highly unlikely to be able to compensate for a reduction in local or regional news and there is no guarantee that, if Fairfax regional papers are sold off by Nine, they could survive on their own.
