It seems that the editorial upheavals affecting British and American journalism are being replicated in Australia. Alan Oakley, the editor of the Sydney Morning Herald (SMH), "resigned" yesterday.
As Margaret Simons relates, he is the fourth Australian editor to depart in the past year. He follows David Penberthy (Daily Telegraph, Sydney), Bruce Guthrie (Herald Sun, Melbourne) and Andrew Jaspan (The Age, Melbourne).
She also predicts that Paul Armstrong will soon be resigning for the Perth-based West Australian and comments: "There is no doubt it is a bloody, bloody time to be in charge of a newspaper, and no prospect of things improving either. The future is one of downsizing, trying to do the same with less, sackings and redundancies."
The SMH is owned by Fairfax, and Simon says its trading position "is miserable, budgets are slashed, the staff are revolting and more redundancies may well be around the corner."
It was barely a year ago that I was in Sydney and Melbourne and was led to believe that Australian papers were in much better shape, in terms of both advertising revenue and circulation, than their Brit and US counterparts.
My colleague, Stephen Brook, is in Australia just now, so perhaps he'll cast some light on the situation when he returns the week after next.
