Communications and Fairfax

At risk of annoying those who don’t like reading here about things that are appearing in Crikey, there will be a story there today updating the reports I posted here yesterday about recent happenings around the restructure of business coverage at Fairfax.

The conclusion: the charitable view is that Fairfax has a communications problem, both internally and externally. Less charitable views are certainly possible.

But continuing with the communications view ( and giving some value adding for readers of this blog who are not Crikey subscribers) I’ll add here that there are rumblings from within Fairfax that the new CEO, Brian McCarthy, might well need a bit of public relations help, as evidenced by the handling of the “we don’t need more capital” to “we are seeking more capital” switchover,.

It is no secret that McCarthy doesn’t like the limelight. Indeed, this has been seen as a virtue in the past, when as boss of Rural Press he did better than flashier CEOs eleswhere.

But now I am told there are those  among his colleagues who think he doesn’t handle well the inevitable media exposure that comes with heading a company like Fairfax. He tends to the defensive when asked to explain himself, and it doesn’t come across well.

In this context it is worth noting that there has been no announcement on a replacement for Fairfax’s chief spin doctor, Bruce Wolpe, who this month is due to move to Washington to become a senior adviser in Barack Obama’s administration.

You’d have to say that if ever a company needed good PR  – let alone good internal communications – it is Fairfax right now.