Fairfax own the Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, Brisbane Times, Domain, RSVP, MyCareer, Australian Financial Review and stacks of smaller publications.

from crikey:

Naughty Fairfax has been caught red handed trying to run two of its own newspapers into the ground prior to a forced sell-off.

This is exactly the kind of greedy behaviour the former Government’s cross media changes encourage and another reminder to the new Communications Minister to get moving on a safety net to encourage greater diversity for media consumers.

Under the terms of last year’s massive merger of Rural Press and Fairfax, the ACCC placed some conditions affecting several important community newspapers in the Hunter Valley and Lake Macquarie regions of New South Wales.

Fairfax agreed that it would sell off its two weekly free newspapers, the Newcastle and Lake Macquarie Post and Hunter Post, because they were similar in their circulation to two newspapers it was acquiring from Rural Press, namely the Newcastle and Lake Macquarie Star and the Lower Hunter Star.

Under the terms of the ACCC arrangement, Fairfax had to sell the two Posts as viable going concerns to ensure the areas continued to enjoy some media competition.

So what did Fairfax go and do? You guessed it. It cherry picked the best bits from the Posts and started publishing them in the Stars before it sold the Posts to another publisher, the Camillaro company owned by the Constantine family.

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What will happen if Kerry Stokes wins The West?
Margaret Simons writes:

Doesn’t concentration of ownership matter anymore? Have we given up the ghost?

Hardly anybody wants to defend the appalling record of the West Australian newspaper, which means that Kerry Stokes’ aggressive move on the Board is getting warm fuzzies from many journalists.

As this recent story in The Australian shows, the West has so undermined its credibility that it has trouble getting support even on basic issues of media freedom in its continuing battle with the Government. Now nobody seems to want to mention concentration of media ownership issues.

Stokes’ Channel Seven is not only the winner in the ratings war, but also a comparatively pleasant place to work, with less of the bullying, d-ck-swinging culture problems of its competitor, Channel Nine. As a result, journalists like Stokes, with his rags to riches success story, provides a corrective to the rich kids Packer and Murdoch.

And yet if Stokes succeeds in his moves on West Australian Newspapers, the two dominant media organisations in the state will both be effectively controlled by the same owner. Channel Seven is the leading television station, and the West Australian the only print outlet that really matters.

This at a time when the West Australian Government, mired in continuing corruption inquiries, should rightly be subjected to searching scrutiny.

Can we trust Channel Seven and the West to report with fearless independence? Can we trust them to report on each other, when necessary? Can we trust Stokes not to get too hand in glove with the Government, united though they may be in their criticism of present management at the West?

We might draw some conclusions from today’s Yahoo7 website, on which the news of Stokes' move on the West Australian board is buried in a strange and poorly written business news item while the story about the s-x discrimination allegations against Nine boss John Westacott get front page billing.