Fairfax vow on printed word

Fairfax Media chief executive Greg Hywood last night said the newspaper editions of The Sydney Morning and The Age will run until at least the end of the year.

Fairfax Media chief executive Greg Hywood last night told the ABC’s 7:30 the newspaper editions of The Sydney Morning and The Age in Melbourne will run until at least the end of the year.

Mr Hywood was asked if the printed editions would survive after last week’s announcement Fairfax planned to slash the equivalent of 120 full-time employ­ees from its Sydney and Melbourne newsrooms.

He did not give a timeline for how long the 175-year-old publisher would continue to produce newspapers. “I can’t say that newspapers are forever. My commitment, having started here at the age of 21, is to make sure that quality journalism survives, that we actually do deliver that public good, but that involves really quite dramatic changes.”

The severity of the job cuts saw journalists strike for three days and fuelled speculation the company was preparing to stop printing weekday editions of the SMH and Age .

Mr Hywood reiterated a commitment made last week that the publisher would continue to produce “high-quality journalism … This is not a click-bait company”.

Former editor-in-chief of The Australian Financial Review Glenn Burge has told The Australian that he believed Mr Hywood had “no plan” and “no new ideas”.