Australian publishing giant Fairfax Media yesterday said it would begin charging for online content in the increasingly cut-throat newspaper environment as it reported a return to profit.
Fairfax reported an annual net profit of A$282 million (US$250 million), rebounding from a A$380 million loss a year earlier as advertising revenues rallied 7 percent and the firm shrunk its debt.
“Our strong and stable management has made our business more efficient and improved our brand in print, online and broadcasting,” Fairfax CEO Brian McCarthy said. “We are also well positioned for growth in the mobile applications area.”
Fairfax said its digital network audience had grown 18 percent over the past year and it now had 30 million unique users a month, with its online business the group’s fastest-growing segment and second-most profitable.
The subscription-only online version of its flagship business publication, the Australian Financial Review, had strong revenue gains, and Fairfax said it now planned to roll out paid content across its online and emerging mobile platforms.
“We will pursue ... greater sharing of editorial content and collaborating across print, online and mobile, more integrated selling and monetizing our content online and on emerging platforms,” Fairfax said in a statement to the Australian Stock Exchange.
The company, which also has media interests in New Zealand and the US, has already launched smartphone and tablet applications for a number of its products and moved all of its newspapers online, including 160 regional publications.
“Over time the iPhone, iPad and other e-reader platforms will enable us to distribute our content to new audiences or migrate existing audiences from the papers,” it said.
Fairfax publishes the Sydney Morning Herald and the Age and owns a national radio network as well as magazine titles. Its major competitor is News Limited, an offshoot of Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp.
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The Central Weather Administration (CWA) yesterday said there are four weather systems in the western Pacific, with one likely to strengthen into a tropical storm and pose a threat to Taiwan. The nascent tropical storm would be named Usagi and would be the fourth storm in the western Pacific at the moment, along with Typhoon Yinxing and tropical storms Toraji and Manyi, the CWA said. It would be the first time that four tropical cyclones exist simultaneously in November, it added. Records from the meteorology agency showed that three tropical cyclones existed concurrently in January in 1968, 1991 and 1992.
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‘SOMETHING SPECIAL’: Donald Trump vowed to reward his supporters, while President William Lai said he was confident the Taiwan-US partnership would continue Donald Trump was elected the 47th president of the US early yesterday morning, an extraordinary comeback for a former president who was convicted of felony charges and survived two assassination attempts. With a win in Wisconsin, Trump cleared the 270 electoral votes needed to clinch the presidency. As of press time last night, The Associated Press had Trump on 277 electoral college votes to 224 for US Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic Party’s nominee, with Alaska, Arizona, Maine, Michigan and Nevada yet to finalize results. He had 71,289,216 votes nationwide, or 51 percent, while Harris had 66,360,324 (47.5 percent). “We’ve been through so
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