The Sydney Morning Herald editor Judith Whelan may have not captained the ship long, but she is already well aware of the clear direction in which the paper is heading, revealing plans recently to Mediaweek.
While The SMH continues to thrive, Whelan understands the current media climate is constantly evolving thanks to the digital revolution. The paper is no stranger to change – after 181 years printed as a broadsheet it adopted a more compact form in 2013, and continues to set its sights online.
For Whelan, the paper’s embrace of multiple platforms has allowed it even greater success: “Twenty years ago we wouldn’t have been able to say that. We would have been very proud of our two million readers of the Saturday newspaper. Now, we are accessing so many more people.” The results speak for themselves – the latest emma (Enhanced Media Metrics Australia) readership figures confirm The SMH has the number one cross-platform readership group with 5.9 million readers.
It’s a time of great change says Whelan. “Every single media organisation in the world is having to transform itself. That transformation inevitably means that new jobs will emerge and jobs, which have been around for a long time, might disappear.
“What we are going through now is a part of that transformation. The Sydney Morning Herald is going to be here for a very long time, delivering stories in every new way to audiences. If we don’t do that, we will shrivel up and die. We have to keep changing. We have to keep adapting what our audience wants from us.”
Whelan confirms that focus will be on the further development of mobile offerings: “Our audience is very demanding now. They expect our mobile site to tell them immediately what is going on. They expect there to be a great mix of stories so they can choose what they want to read as they are travelling to work, travelling home, or choose what they might want to share with their friends.”
