Fairfax and Syme

Overview

This profile deals with the Fairfax and Syme groups, united in 1972.

It covers -

  • introduction
  • history
  • holdings
  • studies
  • rural press
  • INL

There is a complementary profile on the Rural Press group, acquired through a friendly takeover in December 2006.

Introduction

At its height the Fairfax empire encompassed television and radio stations in Australia, magazines (including the UK Spectator), rural and suburban newspapers, Australia's major financial newspaper (Australian Financial Review) and broadsheets (Sydney Morning Herald and Melbourne Age).

It was dismembered last decade after Warwick Fairfax took on too much debt—what's an extra hundred million or so—in buying out family members and the public. Rival publishers such as Packer and Black have bought and then sold stakes; what's left of the empire is now owned by the usual fund managers and small investors rather than people with ink in their blood.

Amid recurrent speculation of a bid by O'Reilly family interests in April 2003 Fairfax announced a $1 billion deal to acquire most of the publishing interests of New Zealand's Independent Newspapers Ltd (INL), at that time around 50% owned by News.

The deal was approved by Australian and New Zealand competition authorities in mid-2003 and adds 80 newspaper and magazine titles to Fairfax's operations, including The Dominion Post, The Press, Sunday News, The Sunday Star-Times, seven regional dailies, 61 community publications, 13 magazine titles, commercial printing interests and the Gordon & Gotch distribution business.

In August 2006 IDG agreed to acquire Fairfax's British assets (including MIS UK and the Market Base database). In return Fairfax Business Media (FBM) gained a licence to publish IDG's global IT content and mastheads in Singapore, Malaysia and New Zealand, along with IDG's circulation information and infrastructure in those markets.

As part of industry realignment in late 2006 - driven by anticipation of new media laws and private equity deals in Australia and elsewhere - both News and Stokes acquired stakes in Fairfax. In December 2006 Fairfax announced a $2.9 billion friendly takeover of Rural Press group, diluting those stakes and creating a $9 billion print and digital media group, the largest in Australia and New Zealand.

History

A chronology of the group is here.

Holdings

An indication of current holdings is here.

Studies

The major works are Gavin Souter's two studies of the Sydney Morning Herald and the Fairfax family: Company of Heralds and Heralds & Angels (Melbourne: Melbourne Uni Press 1981 and 1991). There's no comparable study of the Syme family, builders of The Age in Melbourne - subsequently acquired by Fairfax. Rivalry with the Packers and Murdochs features in most studies of those families.

RB Walker's The Newspaper Press in New South Wales, 1803-1920 (Sydney: Sydney Uni Press 1976) and Yesterday's News, A History of the Newspaper Press in New South Wales from 1920 to 1945 (Sydney: Sydney Uni Press 1980) are also valuable. Among works by and regarding Fairfax journalists see Voice of the Thunderer: The Journalism of HG Kippax (Canberra: Pandanus Books 2006) by Harry Heseltine.

The Fairfax dynasty's disintegration is portrayed in James Fairfax's elegiac My Regards To Broadway (Sydney: Imprint 1992), The Man Who Couldn't Wait: Warwick Fairfax's Folly & the Bankers Who Backed Him (Port Melbourne: Heinemann 1991) by V J Carroll and Operation Dynasty (Elwood: Greenhouse 1989) by Trevor Sykes. A useful point of reference is Marie Brenner's House of Dreams (London: Michael Joseph 1989) on meltdown, US style.

Paul Chadwick's Media Mates: Carving Up Australia's Media (South Melbourne: Macmillan 1989) and Allan Brown's Commercial Media in Australia (St Lucia: Uni of Qld Press 1986) are of value as an introduction to the dynamics of media regulation and concentration in Australia during the 1970s and 80s. There is a more recent account in Public Voices, Private Interests: Australia's Media Policy (Sydney: Allen & Unwin 1995) edited by Jennifer Craik & Albert Moran.

Trevor Barr's thoughtful Newmedia.com.au: The Changing Face of Australia's Media and Communications (St Leonards: Allen & Unwin 2000) is essential reading in understanding the interaction between politicians, bureaucrats, business, consumers and technology. Another perspective is provided by AFR journalist Mark Westfield's blow by blow account in The Gatekeepers: The Global Media Battle to control Australia's Pay TV (Annandale: Pluto Press 2000).

There has been no major study of Gordon & Gotch, the newspaper, book and magazine distributor whose New Zealand operation was acquired in 2003 as part of the INL deal. Denis Cryle's 1996 paper Culture and Commerce: Gordon and Gotch Ltd in Australia 1890-1940 is suggestive.

Rural Press

Most of the extended family took Warwick's money and ran. James Fairfax for example has continued a career as an art patron and philanthropist. The 'John' Fairfax branch of the family took a number of minor titles along with the loot and emerged as a major force in provincial publishing.

As of 2006 its Rural Press (discussed in more detail here) controlled over 170 rural and regional titles in Australia, New Zealand and the US, along with minor broadcasting holdings and the Canberra Times (CT), acquired from Seven television network proprietor Kerry Stokes.

Rural was acquired by Fairfax in a December 2006 friendly takeover, with the Fairfax family having a stake of around 13% in the merged group (worth over $1.1 billion).

INL

In 2003 Fairfax acquired most newspaper and magazine operations of INL (formerly Independent Newspapers Ltd), the New Zealand subsidiary of Murdoch's News group.

This site features a separate profile on INL.