Vic: Journalists, community called to rally outside The Age

AAP General News (Australia)
08-29-2008
Vic: Journalists, community called to rally outside The Age

MELBOURNE, Aug 29 AAP - A public rally will be staged from 2.30pm (AEST) today outside
the offices of Fairfax Media's The Age newspaper in Melbourne, unions say.

The rally is to protest against what staff claim is the lowering of editorial standards
at the paper.

Fairfax Media staff in Melbourne and Sydney are on strike until Monday over job cuts and pay.

Media Entertainment and Arts Alliance spokesman Mike Dobbie said the rally would continue
into the evening.

"This protest rally is open to everyone in the community to come out and support high-quality
journalism at The Age and to condemn the low-cost, low-quality journalism that Fairfax
management wishes to impose," he told AAP.

Fairfax chief executive David Kirk today denied the 550 job cuts announced this week
would affect the quality of the group's reporting.

He said just over 100 jobs would go across Sydney and Melbourne editorial departments,
but would largely affect sub-editing positions on advertising and lifestyle supplements.

"Not the ... hard news, not the international news, not the business, sport, local
news, that is not the part of the business that is being affected at all," Mr Kirk told
AAP.

"It's really quite mischievous of people to say that there's going to be a decline
in the quality."

AAP md/jxt/jfm/tnf

KEYWORD: FAIRFAX RALLY

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