An anonymous tip just sent to Crikey:
From an informed source: D.D. McNicoll sacked yesterday from The Australian. Told to leave the building immediately not even given time to clear out his desk. Today is his 60th birthday. Redundancy at News Ltd capped at 1 year. McNicoll has been there 35 years. They did not even spell his name correctly on the form he was told to sign.
Nice people
Morale not good
6 Comments
People may be sniping at Fairfax for their outsourcing of news in the paper, etc., but I have noticed that the print edition of The Australian has become positively anaemic over the last little while. Which suggests, of course, not much content. Downsizing in a pretty radical way, it seems. Though, I would posit that they may be going the way of many newspapers in America, i.e. heading towards an online presence only, because the content on the website is still pretty substantial.
btw, is D.D.McNicoll, David McNicoll’s son? I would assume so, as I also believe that David McNicoll died a while ago. If so, then IMHO he is not the newspaperman his father was, and thus it may be that cost pressures have caught up with News Ltd. and overtaken sentiment wrt keeping him on staff.
That’s a pretty dramatic exit.
It would indeed appear than D.D. McNichol has left the building.
http://www.canberratimes.com.au/news/national/national/general/hemmes-fights-the-ivy-builder/1472709.aspx?storypage=0
IT’S TIME TO GO
A senior feature writer at The Australian, Elisabeth Wynhausen, is the latest to be told she has been made redundant at the newspaper. Wynhausen, who had farewell drinks on Friday at The Clarendon hotel, joins D.D. McNicoll who was called into the office of editor-in-chief, Chris Mitchell, on Thursday afternoon, the day before his 60th birthday, to be told he no longer had a job after 35 years at News Ltd. McNicoll, we are told, walked straight out the door without bothering to clear his desk, prompting two colleagues, David King and Michelle Gunn, to rush to ensure he didn’t leave the building alone. Other redundancies at the The Oz include an online subeditor and former sports editor, Scott Coomber, and a Melbourne photographer, Richard Cisar-Wright. A former Daily Telegraph photographer, David Motte, who worked in the imaging department, also lost his job.
As has D.D. McNicoll.
Schadenfreude
On the other hand I feel for EW – she always seemed to me a cut above the rest of the hacks there.
However this is probably a good example of life imitating art in her case… she can write “Dirt Cheap 2 – I’m back!”