On Friday, journalists at The Age, The Sydney Morning Herald, The Australian Financial Review, WAToday and Brisbane Times walked off the job for five days in response to the last pay offer made by Nine management in negotiations over their enterprise bargaining agreement.
The last time this happened, Nine [then Fairfax] journos were putting their jobs at risk by engaging in illegal industrial action. This time, Nine decided to test the resolve of its heavily unionised workforce — soon after announcing job cuts while sending Scott Cam to the Paris Olympics to promote The Block — during the extremely small window of time they are legally allowed to strike.
So, how does management keep their best performing product going without the people who usually fill it — let alone during both the Olympics Games and the most crowded election schedule in human history, dominated by the unfolding drama of the US election?
Get the editors working
As you might expect during the early days of the Olympics, The Age’s sports editor Chloe Saltau, combined with pre-filed pieces from senior sports writer Emma Kemp, has filled pages upon pages. Also happy to help out with Olympic coverage has been European correspondent Rob Harris, shifting from political coverage to doing what the striking sports writers among his colleagues cannot.
In today’s Age and SMH, we get five pages in before we see a byline by anyone other than Harris, Saltau and other senior figures at the respective publications — deputy editor Mathew Dunckley in the case of The Age and deputy federal editor Stephanie Peatling at the SMH. Dunckley in particular has earned an allrounder award, filing nine pieces since July 26, covering areas such as Victorian politics, water safety, the MCG, AFL and co-authoring a fairly tepid CBD column with Age editor Patrick Elligett.
Or, of course, you could engage the work of someone who’d have absolutely no issue crossing a picket line, which is why readers can enjoy the insights of former attorney-general George Brandis (though this doesn’t explain why they’ve been copping so much of him before the strike).
Pictorials!
The “French impressions” pictorial that ran in Nine’s Saturday papers may well have been there regardless of the industrial relations situation at the company. Still, the collection of moody black-and-white photos that showed “Australia’s Olympians and Paralympians as you’ve never seen them before” (notably shot while they were still in Australia) is undeniably a good way to fill pages that might have otherwise needed a writer.
Hold what you can prior to the strike
As his colleague David Crowe was at pains to point out, federal politics correspondent Paul Sakkal’s account of the connection between a Greens staffer and pro-Palestine activism was filed before the strike commenced. A number of journalists who are on strike showed up in the weekend editions of the Nine papers, implying their copy had been locked in before the strike commenced.
Indeed, the weekender format, favouring features, opinion and analysis — much of it, in this case, looking back on recent weeks’ events in US politics — may have taken a touch of the edge off for the compilers.
Through the wires
During the biggest sporting event of the year, it’s notable how much sports coverage is being left to AAP wire, bringing to mind that time in 2022 that then managing director of publishing James Chessell told the Mumbrella Publish conference that wire copy was good because “I’m not going to lie, it gives us cover when there’s industrial action”.
There is also a great deal of copy sharing, particularly across the “world” section — with republished pieces from the London Telegraph, The New York Times and Reuters joining AAP copy.
‘Light’ subbing
It’s not just reporters who have downed tools. Subeditors at Nine are also out on strike, and boy is it showing.
Sakkal’s piece about Labor’s potential (and now confirmed) cabinet reshuffle was initially published online with Senator Malarndirri McCarthy’s name misspelt and Cooper MP Ged Kearney listed twice among the potential recipients of a promotion (once her first name was spelt “Gen”). This has since been fixed.
Then there’s the live blogs, at risk of embarrassing little errors at the best of times given the speed at which they update — head of premium content Chris Paine’s reporting on the remarkable Matildas–Zambia game overnight asked readers at halftime, “What is actually doing in Nice?”
The piece deserves some kind of medal for following the bald declaration “Not a typo” with a typo and the photo caption of “Ummmmm”.
UPDATE: This piece has been amended to clarify that Emma Kemp is in fact on strike and any copy under her name was filed prior to the strike.
