AFR to cut print in WA after Seven’s ‘abuse of power’

The Australian Financial Review will be forced to stop its physical edition in Perth this month after billionaire Kerry Stokes’ Seven West Media abruptly doubled the cost of printing the newspaper for distribution in Western Australia.

Nine Entertainment, which owns the Financial Review as well as this masthead, said the decision would end seven decades of the financial journal’s distribution as a printed newspaper in the state.

Michael Stutchbury, editor-in-chief of The Australian Financial Review.Credit: Oscar Colman

“We work very constructively with the printers of our newspapers and magazines to ensure the long-term sustainability of our print products, which continue to be profitable,” said Nine’s managing director of publishing, Tory Maguire.

“Fortunately, the Financial Review is an incredibly successful digital publication, which has allowed us to make this decision in the best interests of our business.”

Financial Review editor-in-chief Michael Stutchbury told Perth radio station 6PR that Maguire was informed last month that Seven West would be exercising its option to cancel the previous contract with 28 days’ notice.

The contract termination notice was delivered to Nine on the same day as its news site WAtoday’s launch party. Nine was given seven days to accept a new contract that doubled the price.

“The sad reality is that a doubling of the price of one of the biggest costs of publishing a newspaper, the printing itself, meant that the Western Australian printing operations would become loss making. In this day, and age, you can’t really sustain loss-making operations,” Stutchbury told 6PR.

The last print edition of the Financial Review will be May 22. The Financial Review quoted Stutchbury labelling it as an “uncompetitive abuse of market power” and he told 6PR that Seven West had made little attempt to negotiate over the matter.

“We tried to have some interaction to discuss it … and obviously, how we could do something about it, but we got no reaction from the Seven side,” he said. Seven West has been approached for comment.

There is no other printing operation in WA that can produce a daily newspaper aside from Seven’s Colourpress. Stokes dominates the media in WA via control of its main newspaper, The West Australian, many of its regional titles, and the main television network, Seven.

It has been a tough six months for both Stokes and Seven West.

In December, Stokes agreed to pay the multimillion-dollar costs of the Ben Roberts-Smith defamation litigation against Nine, following reports from this publication that accused Roberts-Smith of being a war criminal.

In a historic decision last year, Federal Court Justice Anthony Besanko dismissed the lawsuit and found the newspapers had proven to the civil standard – on the balance of probabilities – that Roberts-Smith was complicit in the murder of four unarmed prisoners in Afghanistan.

Roberts-Smith, who was a Seven West employee at the time, had his legal case funded by the company and then a private entity controlled by Stokes. This year, a former producer at Seven West alleged the network had paid for drugs and prostitutes to secure an interview with Bruce Lehrmann.

Seven’s news boss Craig McPherson and Spotlight executive producer Mark Llewellyn subsequently left the network.

Seven West shares – which were worth more than 60¢ just two years ago – are currently trading around the 20.5¢ mark.

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