@BleacherReport Life on the Roster Bubble: Thoughts from a Former NFL Player

Tweet

Ryan Riddle

http://bleacherreport.com/articles/1229910-life-on-the-roster-bubble-thoughts-from-a-former-nfl-player

After just under three years of life in the NFL, teetering on the edge of banishment at the bottom of rosters, I can unquestionably affirm the glorious dream job fans may imagine, is rarely the reality.
What is wrong with it you ask? Pain and injuries, media scrutiny, world-class competition, office politics, fear and insecurities, social hierarchies and the expectations of family, friends, coaches and teammates. And that's not to mention unimaginable bodily harm veiled in secrecy, capable of destroying the average man—all for the right to be in a group so rare, so elite, that less than 2,000 premier athletes annually can claim the honor. An honor far too stressful to appreciate while fighting to survive life on the NFL bubble.

According to the NFLPA, the chances of making it on an NFL roster if you played high school football are about 0.2 percent. This feat has been attempted and failed by Heisman Trophy winners, All-Americans, Olympic gold medalists, professional wrestlers, world's strongest men, record holders and everything in between. Once you make it that far, the average career is three-and-a-half years.

The Scrubs
From the minute you arrive on an NFL team as a late-round pick or undrafted free agent, you're instantly hit with a shrewd eyeopener. A distinct disparity between the guys who have established themselves, and the guys who are looked upon as temporary, nameless bodies. Here today, gone tomorrow.

This realization can be emotionally devastating, especially to guys normally used to being the big man on campus, often the stars of their respective teams for years. Several friends and former teammates have quickly succumbed to such harsh environments and left the teams they were on before training camp ended. Stories like that of Dwight Jones are far more common than many may realize.

The utter lack of respect toward such low-ranking members by coaches, teammates and the organization can be enough to weed out several guys each year.

A good friend of mine from college was signed to the New England Patriots as an undrafted free agent. I recall stories about how he felt in camp that year—struggling to handle the feeling of being utterly worthless, cast aside by the coaches and players.

He described Patriots head coach Bill Belichick as a major (insert expletive here), as he was treated like a human sled dummy. It became obvious to him that any real opportunity to make the team was too much of a long-shot while the bodily damage and torture necessary to see it realized was nowhere near worth it. He left camp after a couple of weeks.

Fortunately, I was more resistant to the details of this reality, as it had been a familiar position throughout my entire career. Even in high school I was overlooked, as I made a habit of surprising people in regards to what I was capable of on a football field.

Another former teammate of mine who signed as an undrafted free agent with the Green Bay Packers never made it to training camp. He left on his own accord after realizing the workload and commitment to daily pain and suffering didn't match his passion for the game. To put this into perspective, he left the unbearable stress of the NFL bubble to go onto become a U.S Marine officer.
I suppose we all have our breaking points. Mine just came a little later.

Unfortunately, the NFL has never been an equal opportunity employer. If you're signed to a big contract, you're given numerous chances to succeed. Naturally, organizations enjoy a return on their investments and love when their decision-making process is affirmed, even if it's a contrived manifestation through a contradictory act of self-preservation.

In other words, it looks bad for the decision-makers to pay big money to guys who don't see the field, or worse yet, don't make the team.

As a result, guys on the bubble are relegated to minimal reps in practice, held to a higher standard of error-free football, and generally ignored by position coaches, who spend most of their time getting the projected starters ready. But when your name is called, you better be ready, it could be your only chance to prove yourself.

The Pressure to Perform
People may have a basic concept of what the pressure is like to perform in the NFL, but I'm certain the experience of it can be much more consuming. College football was huge and loaded with pressure and importance. But relative to the NFL, where everyone around you is fighting for their livelihoods, college was a fun, light-hearted game.

This pressure to perform with so much at stake, so much money on the line, so many people counting on you to make them proud, can literally strangulate the blood right out of your limbs. If you let it get to you, you're in for a very short career. This is why the line between cocky and confident is so often blurred with superstar athletes. In many ways, it's the chicken or the egg relationship. One begets the other.

This was a major undoing of my NFL career. My greatest struggles with this issue came after I was emotionally down, having surrendered NFL idealism following my subsequent release from a team for the first time in my entire athletic existence.

I was on the New York Jets after being picked up on waivers by then-head coach Eric Mangini. He had a style of coaching which demanded the most out of each player, motivated by shame, ridicule and realized threats.

He routinely would hold verbal pop quizzes in our morning team meetings where he would call out a player and ask him a question about something that was talked about yesterday in a position meeting, or was revealed in nightly film study.

In theory, this sounds like an awesome approach to coaching. But the execution of this was a lot different. It became a way for Mangini to use proven veterans as examples for knowing their stuff by asking them questions he knew they would get correct by prompting them beforehand or asking something they were sure to know. In contrast, he would pick a guy on the bubble who may be playing on offense, and ask him a question which would only pertain to a defensive player.

If you were a guy on the bottom of the roster, there was no telling what you could be asked in the team meetings. I would go into those meetings every morning far too nervous to focus on anything helpful toward my preparation. I was not alone in feeling this way. Mangini had his team caring so much, he had inadvertently created extreme performance anxiety throughout the organization.

This carried over onto the field and in the games as well. I hate to admit it, but there came a stretch in New York where I was actually thankful to be deactivated for a game because it meant I at least couldn't mess anything up and be humiliated in front of the whole team just before being sent home without even a goodbye or good luck.

It's easy to see the destructive nature of this mindset. But it's amazing what massive amounts of pressure can do.

Throughout my career I played through serious injuries by refusing to alert the medical staff to my issues.

To this day, I still have a weird popping and grinding feeling in my neck from a play that happened on a kickoff in the annual preseason opener, known as the Hall of Fame Game. That was the first game of the year and I secretly was never the same afterward. I never even told my parents in an effort to not worry them.

Guys on the bubble understand the need to stay healthy in order to keep their NFL dreams alive, so they abide by the rules of secrecy, inner strength and necessity to remain physically available. Meanwhile, the veterans have the luxury to sit out practice because of a tight hamstring or a tender pinkie finger.

While on the Baltimore Ravens, I received my first real concussion on the opening kickoff of a game. Running down to make a tackle, I lost my balance and slipped, falling into the guy trying to block me and hitting the side of my helmet on his knee. It was a fluke accident that left me cloudy and in a dream state for well over 30 minutes.

This was the final preseason game of the season and the last chance for many of us on the bubble to make the team. I knew there was no way I could sit this one out.

Adding to the motivation, I was playing against the Atlanta Falcons, a team who had promised me certain opportunities in an attempt to lure me away from the Jets, who were also looking to re-sign me for the offseason. Needless to say, I signed with them in late December (burning a bridge in New York) only to be released in May after buying a house there.

I was hellbent on revenge against the Falcons and wasn't going to let a concussion ruin it. I wanted blood in the worst way. Knowing that my opportunity was going to come in the second half of the game, when they let the backups in, I figured I had time for the symptoms to wear off.

Soon, the fog lifted, and I was relatively back to normal. This was my chance. I was playing the backup position to Terrell Suggs, which was where I was born to play.

Oakland and the Jets had tried to turn me into the next Tedy Bruschi, which I was actually making strides at. But pass-rushing was my true talent. I ended up sacking the quarterback for the Falcons two times that game, giving the Ravens their only two sacks of the game.

The next day I was brought into the team meeting room with some rookies and washed-up veterans where head coach Brian Billick put up a list of names on the projection screen listing who was released. My name was on that list.

Defeated, deflated and on my way out of the facility, I was stopped in the hallway by Rex Ryan and ushered into his office. He closed the door and sat me down, looking into my eyes with concern. Understanding the nature of the situation, he candidly divulged his thoughts on my ability as a football player. He explained the reasoning and thought process behind the decision.

Apparently I was not valuable enough on special teams to hold a roster spot as an unproven backup. I was also ineligible for the practice squad because I had accrued a full season on a 53-man roster.
He also said that they had an undrafted rookie who had a solid preseason and they didn't want to risk losing him to another team. He let me know I was one injury away from being called back to the team. I thanked him for the opportunity and drove back to the hotel.

That was my last time in an NFL facility.


The Wear-down
The stress of the NFL is unlike anything most people will ever know. After being cut by the Falcons in my brief stay with the organization, I was so defeated and emotionally compromised, that I wouldn't even return my agent's calls. He was trying to get a hold of me because the Dallas Cowboys and Baltimore Ravens were interested in bringing me in for a work out.

I just couldn't handle any more uncertainty and instability in the face of everything I was sacrificing, waiting for my opportunity. I did eventually give in and go to Baltimore, figuring I was going to treat this experience as if I had nothing to lose.


Imagine a profession where you are contracted to build an entire house alongside 15 other guys doing their own version in direct competition to you. The prize is a $300,000 reward. Each person is expected to show up every day on time without any excuses beyond death itself.

You personally drill, chop, saw hammer and erect this house with your own hard work and muscle, putting your signature on it piece by piece for half a year. After six months of blood, sweat and tears, the company that contracted you picks one of the 15 different houses to be fully completed.

Meanwhile, the other houses are ordered to be destroyed and the losing builders are sent home with a check for a couple thousand dollars.

Take away injuries and physical destruction, and you may get a glimpse of what it's like to fight for an NFL roster spot year after year.


 
 Subscribe in a reader

@SlowTV Can't Be That Hard. Politics and the Media Today

Tweet



  http://blip.tv/slowtv/can-t-be-that-hard-politics-and-the-media-today-6210896 

Last year Julia Gillard told journalists at the National Press Club: “Don’t write crap. Can’t be that hard.” Should Australia’s media’s standards be raised? Is regulation an answer? What is the future of political reporting, given the financial conditions for newspapers? George Megalogenis from The Australian, ABC Online writer Annabel Crabb, the Sydney Morning Herald’s Peter Hartcher, the Federal Opposition’s Communications spokesman Malcolm Turnbull, and former press secretary to Kevin Rudd, Lachlan Harris, tell the ABC’s Barrie Cassidy what responsibility the media bears for our political culture. Presented by Sydney Writers' Festival, May 2012

 Subscribe in a reader

MPs: Rinehart should sign charter @NationalTimesAU

Tweet

http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/political-news/mps-rinehart-should-sign-charter-20120618-20kco.html

COMMUNICATIONS Minister Stephen Conroy and shadow minister Malcolm Turnbull joined yesterday in declaring that Gina Rinehart should sign up to the charter of editorial independence and not try to turn the Fairfax mastheads into mining industry mouthpieces.
Senator Conroy and Mr Turnbull warned that failure to preserve editorial independence would hit readership.
The issue has been cited in the board's resistance to Mrs Rinehart's request for seats on the board. Jack Cowin, a likely Rinehart board appointment, when asked recently which way Mrs Rinehart would take editorial policy, said she would have a stronger right-wing view than probably the average liberal journalist, but added that she had not interfered with news policies at the Ten Network.

Senator Conroy said Mrs Rinehart had indicated that she was ''only interested in influencing the editorial content of Fairfax'' while the board had a strong position on editorial independence.
He said there were genuine concerns that interference would destroy the credibility of the Fairfax mastheads. ''Their readership respects and admires the charter and what it represents, and if you were to start turning it into just a pro-mining industry gazette, well I don't think you would see the rest of the shareholders in Fairfax be too excited about the collapse in readership.''
This morning Senator Conroy said Mrs Rinehart is entitled to representation on the Fairfax board but added ''what she's not entitled to do is trash the brand for all the other shareholders".
Mr Turnbull said the board's reluctance to give her seats without a commitment to editorial independence was understandable. Part of Fairfax's revenues ''are based on a perception that it is editorially independent and it's not controlled by one vested interest or another''. ''If Fairfax … were seen to be a mouthpiece of Gina Rinehart and a spokesvehicle for the mining industry, that would undermine its business model dramatically,'' he said.

Senator Conroy said the government could not justify putting money into newspapers to help them. The government could not ignore the technological changes in the industry any more than the Fairfax or News Ltd shareholders could. He said 1900 job losses were terrible for any sector, but ''there is a future, just like with photography''.

Mr Turnbull praised Fairfax's plan to charge digital subscriptions, and predicted that hard copy editions of some newspapers were likely to partly or fully disappear.

''But of course the problem is that as long as you've still got a solid base of advertising in your print edition, much of which you don't think will transition to the digital platform, then you're reluctant to abandon the print platform - but at some point it will have to happen. And this is where the destructive creation, or the creative destruction of the internet is affecting all business,'' he said.
Workplace Relations Minister Bill Shorten said Fairfax ''has long been a very important contributor to Australia's democracy'' and so yesterday's news ''should be of real concern to all of us''. As the member for Maribyrnong he was also concerned about the planned closure of the Tullamarine printing facility.

''I strongly encourage Fairfax's leadership to take a long-term view of their business activities by investing in the skills of their workforce, in all locations, as an alternative to redundancies,'' he said.
The opposition sought to tie the carbon tax into the Fairfax job losses. In the Senate, frontbencher George Brandis, pointing to the power costs the company faced, asked whether Finance Minister Penny Wong accepted any responsibility for the job losses. Senator Wong said that ''to seriously suggest that a business decision made by a media company is something to do with a carbon price is a seriously odd thing to do''.

Premier Ted Baillieu said Fairfax had made its commercial decisions. ''In the longer term, we want to ensure that there is media diversity in this state.''

 
 Subscribe in a reader

@ConversationEDU Rinehart’s tilt at power is bad news for public debate

Tweet

http://theconversation.edu.au/rineharts-tilt-at-power-is-bad-news-for-public-debate-7725

Stephan Lewandowsky

Australian Professorial Fellow, Cognitive Science Laboratories at University of Western Australia

There are numerous indications that mining magnate Gina Rinehart seeks to take control of the Fairfax media group. What are the likely implications of that move, and how would it affect Australian society and democratic discourse? I focus on two aspects of this potential development: the impact that different media outlets have on their audiences; and the likely consequences of an increasingly fragmented media landscape on societal discourse.

Concerning the first issue, there is ample evidence that bad media can do considerable harm.
Professor Stephen Kull and colleagues at the University of Maryland have been keeping track of key beliefs among the American public for many years, and their data are as revealing as they are concerning: long after the search for “Weapons of Mass Destruction” (WMD) proved futile after the invasion of Iraq in 2003, large segments of the U.S. public continued to believe in their existence.
Similarly, in 2010, nearly 45% of the American public erroneously believed that scientists are evenly divided on whether or not climate change is occurring — when in fact an overwhelming majority of experts supports the consensus view, endorsed by virtually all scientific organisations around the world: that the Earth is warming due to human activities.

Even more revealing is that the extent of such mistaken beliefs varies dramatically with Americans’ preferred news source. Consumers of Murdoch-owned Fox News were most likely to be misinformed on a range of issues, whereas those who primarily listened to National Public Radio (roughly comparable to our ABC) were most likely to be attuned to reality. Of course, this pattern may arise because people who are already ill-informed or less educated are more likely to tune into Fox, whereas people who are better informed or educated prefer to listen to National Public Radio. In other words, Fox may be a victim of its audience, rather than the other way around.

Although this possibility cannot be ruled out, it is rendered less likely by a further aspect of the data: the extent to which Fox-consumers were misinformed increased with how much they watched their preferred channel. Those who watched Fox daily had a particularly tenuous hold on reality, whereas those who watched Fox “rarely” or “only once a week” escaped relatively unscathed and resembled occasional listeners of public radio. Increased consumption of National Public Radio, by contrast, increased the accuracy of people’s perceptions, and daily listeners of National Public Radio were generally the best-informed people across a number of studies spanning nearly a decade.
What does Fox News have to do with Gina Rinehart?

We don’t know yet, but the data of Professor Kull and colleagues should alert us to the fact that when a media organ pursues an agenda in preference to reporting accurately, the consequences for society can be dire. And given that we already have several agenda-pursuing propagandistic organs in Australia whose disregard for accuracy is legendary, the spectre of a mining magnate taking control of the major competition must be reason for concern, even if the exact consequences of that move cannot yet be anticipated.

This concern must be balanced against the views of some commentators that “new media”, such as internet blogs, will compensate for the demise of conventional media. On this more optimistic view, it doesn’t matter who owns Fairfax and it doesn’t matter what Rupert Murdoch does because few people read their newspapers anyhow. Instead, the internet provides a smorgasbord of alternative information that permits readers to remain accurately informed.

There are indications that this optimism would be misplaced.

This brings us to the second issue: the consequences of fractionation of the media landscape.
One of the reasons Gina Rinehart’s moves on Fairfax have met little resistance is that the conventional business model of the print media is under great duress. It is precisely those alternative outlets on the internet and the multitude of offerings on cable TV that have curtailed the opportunities for large print-only media corporations.

There is every reason for this trend to continue because the fractionation of media audiences are in the interests of advertisers. For example, purveyors of adult incontinence products do not want to shell out gazillions to advertise to a broad audience on national TV — they much prefer to pay less for ads that air on a smaller network whose audience, however tiny, has exactly the right demographics. Those commercial pressures will likely result in a continued fractionation of media offerings into cyber- or cable-ghettos that satisfy the needs of one — and only one — demographic segment of the population. (It must be noted that this is a future scenario on which there is some agreement, although there is considerable debate about the current extent of audience fragmentation. But the trend seems clear.)

It is possible, therefore, that the large print-oriented Fairfax will be broken into smaller components, and there has been speculation that this break-up is one of Rinehart’s intentions.
So, what of it? And why would any of this matter?

There is evidence that fragmentation matters a great deal because it leads to increasing polarisation of public discourse and “epistemic bubbles”; that is, isolated communities in which facts are shaped to suit the beholders ideological needs. People tend to visit internet sites (especially blogs) that conform to their own views. In consequence, it becomes advantageous for politicians to make extreme statements.

Research by Professor Ed Glaeser and colleagues has shown that if politicians can preferentially address their own supporters, they are more likely to make extreme statements. This extremism becomes worthwhile only if a politician’s extremism attracts more supporters than are repelled on the opposing side. Thus, audience fragmentation is a necessary prerequisite for extremism because if a politician’s statements were processed by a broad national audience, then there is a strong incentive to pursue the “median” voter rather than make extreme statements.

We are therefore facing a pernicious chain of consequences. Modern technology has enabled the creation of a multitude of information channels; commercial pressures are likely to facilitate the creation of isolated “cyber-ghettos”; and, as a result, society is likely to become more polarised and politicians more extreme.

Those trends cannot be healthy for democratic discourse and the well-being of civil society. Opposing those trends is a difficult challenge, and that challenge is unlikely to be aided by an increased involvement of Gina Rinehart in the Australian media.
 
 Subscribe in a reader

@ConversationEDU Malcolm Fraser: Does it matter who owns our papers? Yes it does

Tweet

http://theconversation.edu.au/malcolm-fraser-does-it-matter-who-owns-our-papers-yes-it-does-7738

Malcolm Fraser

Professorial Fellow at University of Melbourne

The Age and the Sydney Morning Herald have maintained editorial independence since the foundation of the newspapers. It is an important principle of all great newspapers, but it is a principle that will almost certainly be snuffed out this week.

Gina Rinehart is expected to take control of the paper almost immediately. A spokesman for her has already said that the board should establish an appropriate direction for editorial policy. What can we expect? Opposition to the Emissions Trading Scheme, which is already law. Opposition to the Minerals Resource Rent Tax, which is already law. Policies that will support unbridled profits of great mining enterprises, perhaps polices not far short of those supported by the Tea Party and the Republican right in the United States. If this comes to pass, Australia will be effectively without independent print media.

Governments could not have stopped the failure of The Age and the Sydney Morning Herald in their old form, because management has made serious mistakes. Instead of running the enterprises as one, they thought they could establish separate enterprises, one for the print media and one for the internet, or new media. This led to lack of strength on both counts and loss of advertisers, loss of support. These mistakes are directly attributable to incompetent board management.

Does it matter who owns our newspapers? Does it matter who controls the media? In far off days, which I am old enough to remember, Prime Minister Bob Menzies went into the federal parliament to prevent a British company buying four radio stations. He said it was wrong for people who do not belong to the country to own such a powerful instrument for propaganda.

The new owner of The Age certainly belongs to this country, but the principle Menzies enunciated carried with it further implications. Media should not be under the direct control of special interest groups whether they belong to this country or to other countries. That is why we need diversity of media ownership. That is why I stood on the back of a truck with Gough Whitlam overlooking Fitzroy Gardens long years ago, to try and prevent the Fairfax empire falling into foreign hands. A foreign owner has interests that are not ours. A mining magnate has specific industry interests that are not necessary those of Australia.

To say that it does not matter is to deny responsibility. What are governments to do? At the very least they could have preserved rules that would maintain diversity of media ownership. Those who own television stations should not own the print media. There should be a limit on the number of stations that any one person or corporation can own.

The economic rationalists might say that this will lead to inefficiencies. They are only concerned with the economic bottom line. A democracy is concerned with much more than that. A dictatorship could be more efficient than a democracy on that basis. You don’t need to pay all the politicians. Freedom and diversity have a cost. The economic bottom line does not always determine the best outcome. If it did, we would have no opera, no ballet, the arts would atrophy. The poor would be further impoverished.

For some time, Australian governments seem to have suggested that it does not matter who owns the print media, or for that matter television, perhaps a more powerful instrument for propaganda.
On many things, the political parties are at odds with the interests of Australians and with the views of many many people in Australia.

What can we look forward to? In present circumstances the print media espouses the most conservative economic policies. Policies that will enhance the obscene wealth of those who are ready extraordinarily wealthy, that will probably bind us even more tightly as a client state of the United States. No competition, no diversity, making it harder for people to make up their own mind, because people will not be given the choices as they were once given the choices. So much for Australia’s print media.

How much can new media, social media, the internet, Facebook or Twitter, The Conversation or advanced schools of journalism make up for these deficiencies? Certainly the internet makes it possible for people to read half a dozen papers each morning, or more, including journals that maintain high standards, The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Guardian, the Financial Times or those with another language, French or German papers. Here we can find diversity. It is more and more readily available, it will certainly mitigate the coming lack of competition that will be evident in the Australian print media.

The Conversation and Crikey are probably Australia’s best efforts so far at overcoming the deficiencies, the narrowness of ownership and policy of the print media. Foxtel, although expensive, enables a great variety of news services and of commentaries to be readily available to Australians.
Two things are responsible for the destruction of Fairfax. Incompetent board management that has not understood the business it was running, together with governments that believe that ownership of powerful instruments for propaganda is of no account.

There are many countries that maintain nationality provisions for the ownership and control of important media within their borders.

There are no supporters however, for such policies amongst Australia’s current politicians. That may not matter if other forms of media can come to have greater and greater influence – but if politicians still believe the print media has a significant influence on policy and opinion, then we will be seeing policies sold to the highest bidder.

I was speaking to a couple of Americans from Los Angeles only two weeks ago. They told me that they feared their Presidential election would be bought by the candidate with the most money. Democracy for sale. We have not progressed quite as far as America, but we won’t be far behind.

 
 Subscribe in a reader

@ConversationEDU Fairfax or Gina-fax? Let’s have the debate before it’s over

Tweet

Andrew Jaspan

http://theconversation.edu.au/fairfax-or-gina-fax-lets-have-the-debate-before-its-over-7721

The next two weeks will be defining moments for Australia. It’s when Fairfax is likely to morph into Gina-fax.

On Tuesday Gina Rinehart, the world’s richest woman, is expected to confirm that she has acquired up to 19.9% of Fairfax. The current Board, led by ex-Woolworths and now Walmart director Roger Corbett, is expected to raise the white flag in their efforts to ward off Rinehart’s bid for control. Rinehart is believed to want two or three seats on the board, and control of the Fairfax’s editorial positioning. And what she wants she can afford to buy.

Running in parallel, Fairfax will announce this week one of the most radical restructuring of its metropolitan mastheads, The Age and Sydney Morning Herald. From July 1 the two papers will be nationalized, that is, converted into one newsroom across both titles. There will be some local differences to allow the content to be rebranded for the Melbourne and Sydney audiences, but two voices in our shallow pool of diversity will become one.

And Fairfax will reduce its editorial workforce on the two papers by around 25% from roughly 800 to 600.

In tandem, Kim Williams, the chief executive of News Ltd, is expected to announce the most radical restructuring of the entire News Ltd workforce with a reduction of up to 1,500 staff.
This perfect storm has been brewing for some time. The decline and implosion of the media was seen as a European or American disease that Australia would avoid, much like the GFC. The seeds of Fairfax’s destruction were born in the mid 1990s when it failed to fully engage, understand and act on the disruptive threats of the internet.

The story of Fairfax’s decline is one of managerial failure. The company has been run by senior executives and boards with no direct experience running a media company. Instead, leaders at Fairfax have been property developers, management consultants, accountants, and rugby players. Those people did not have the experience or understanding of a people-media business to steer the ship into safe waters. Instead they allowed Fairfax to remain at sea while competitors savaged the business. One by one Fairfax was stripped of its classified advertising “rivers of gold”. The jobs went to Seek.com.au, Cars to Carsales.co.au, homes to Realestate.com.au.

And shorn of those easy revenues the only way Fairfax CEOs could “stay in the game” was to cut costs faster than revenues fell (all the while pocketing eye-watering salaries and bonuses).
Instead of having the foresight to embrace and invest in the digital age by bringing together mastheads to work collegiately, Fairfax leadership instead chose to separate the online team from the print team and run them as two distinct businesses, with “Fairfax Digital” competing for advertising revenues with the so-called “Fairfax Publishing”.

In 2007, I was asked to lead a team of three senior executives to visit the most progressive newspaper/media companies in the US and UK and report back to the then CEO, David Kirk. We went to the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, USA Today, Washington Post, The London Telegraph, The Financial Times and The Guardian.

We reported back to Kirk that every one of these had brought together “print” and “digital” into one resource. That is one editorial team, one advertising team and one back office. Kirk flatly opposed doing the same on the grounds the two businesses were both very profitable. And he wanted to keep it that way.

Five years later, with the company’s market value slashed from $7bn to just over $1bn, this integration will finally be imposed next month.

And for the first time in living memory the change will be led by a former journalist and senior editor, the CEO, Greg Hywood, along with the advice of consultants Bain & Co (Mitt Romney’s crew).

But it’s too late to save the Fairfax we know. The share price has collapsed from $5 to 60c or less because no one in the market believes there is a coherent strategy for the company. And that has left the company weak and defenceless to predators such as Rinehart.

Staff, meanwhile, have been living in denial. Though finally last week the penny dropped among the editorial staff that Gina’s tilt at Fairfax will happen. That has led to great despondency, and many rightly concerned about their future. And of course, once in, she is in control, and they will be told if they don’t like it, they can ship out.

What does this all mean? Rinehart is not an investor in Fairfax to earn a return like the rest of the company’s long-suffering institutional investors. She is making her play to change the climate of opinion in Australia.

Back in 2010 she and her fellow mining barons spent $22m to get rid of Kevin Rudd’s proposed mining tax.

And so successful was the campaign that they got rid of Rudd and saved themselves an estimated $20bn in taxes.

Rinehart’s appointment of Australia’s leading climate change sceptic, Ian Plimer, as an advisor to her mining companies is simply a taste of what’s to come. As one senior Fairfax editor remarked, expect this kind of front page once Rinehart gets control. “Exclusive: Climate Change is a Hoax”.

Rinehart aims to change the terms of debate in Australia for good. Her fellow Channel 10 director, “Hungry Jack” Cowin, the burger man, will likely join Rinehart on the board of Fairfax. Cowin has already made clear that the Fairfax Board has every right to set the editorial tone of the papers. And that Andrew Bolt, who already has the Bolt Report show on Channel 10, would be welcome at a Rinehart dominated Fairfax to “balance the message that’s being communicated to the community”.

With such a program, Rinehart and Co may well tell staff and readers that if they don’t like it they can go elsewhere. The problem in Australia is where to? The media is in crisis elsewhere in the West, but usually there is a choice, somewhere else to go to get a job or to get your news and commentary. Right now if you live in Hobart, Adelaide, Perth, Darwin or Brisbane you have no choice, just the one paper. In Melbourne and Sydney, there was choice.

Readers who, like Rinehart, prefer the editorial tone and message of The Australian, with its line on mining tax little different to that run by BHP, will be spoilt for choice. And scepticism towards climate change will now be shared by all three quality mastheads. Those with different views will have limited options.

Is this the modern, open, progressive, democratic, tolerant, knowledge-based, clever country we aspire to be? Or are we seeing the same rise of the oligarch as in Russia where the resource-rich billionaires also dominate the media? Or Italy, where Silvio Berlusconi owned the majority of the TV stations and newspapers and imposed his right-wing agenda, and ultimately won control of the country as Prime Minister?

This is an important moment for all those who cherish democratic and pluralistic debate and a freedom to information that is factual and reliable to inform decision-making.

Given that both the Fairfax and News Ltd papers are “interested parties” in the outcome, you will be hard pressed to get a full and dispassionate account of the next few weeks' momentous events.
That is what The Conversation will aim to provide. We will be leading a debate over the next few weeks, and keeping tabs on the media developments. We hope you will engage with us through your comments and suggestions for the coverage you would like to see us run. It’s important to have your say while the matter is live, rather than bleat about it afterwards.

Andrew Jaspan is editor of The Conversation and the former editor-in-chief of The Age.

 
 Subscribe in a reader