Fairfax Media shareholders on Monday were sent a notice of their upcoming Annual General Meeting to be held at Crown Casino on 13 November at 10.30am. The Chairman’s letter to shareholders reads:

The business on the Agenda for this year’s meeting is straightforward. The resolutions we are recommending for approval by shareholders include the reelection of Mr Peter Young AM as a director and approval of the Company’s remuneration report.

“Straightforward”? Gotta be joking:

  • Millions of dollars and share schemes dished out to senior executives and the Board on the eve of hundreds of journalists losing their jobs
  • Advertising performance on the skids
  • Non disclosure of the SMH and Age CEO remuneration and massive cash bonuses
  • Long serving Fairfax employees frog marched out of the company without explanation
  • Contributors sacked for refusing to cross picket lines
  • Canteen services cut for employees and abolished for night shift staff at The Age
  • Fairfax’s retail arms closed so no papers are available to readers
  • SMH and Age online sites trashing quality brands. $20 million classified advertising hole at The Age
  • Numerous overseas junkets by Fairfax advertising managers
  • SMH and Age losing Australia’s best journalists and writers
  • Newspaper programs in schools abolished
  • Board with no newspaper experience seeking approval to reelect a favoured financier
  • Former Age editor-in-chief calling Fairfax’s slashing and burning “chilling”
  • Abolition of foreign bureaux
  • Withdrawing financial support from the Walkley Awards…

“Straightforward”? Don’t think so.

Peter Fray

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