lifeasdaddy - The Sydney Morning Herald business section: Didn't employ many journos to publish today.

Today's Sydney Morning Herald 3-page business sections starts on page 17.   It's overwhelmingly comprised of agency and syndicated pieces. Not much from real live (named) Australian journalists, in Sydney or elsewhere.

All three stories below the fold on page 17 (right) are bought in.

Let's look at the tally for the entire three pages.  Syndicated or agency content denoted by ##.

PAGE 17:

Alinta no tlakin gbut Macquarie Bank says we can work it out - Michael Evans

Harmey Norman rings up $2.7b - Vanda Carson

CanWest deal raises heat on Ten sell-off - Ian Austen The new York Times ##

Ads everywhere - and it's going to get worse - Louise Story the New york Times ##

Hasting Funds boss calls it quits - Agencies ##

PAGE 18: Business Focus column - anon.

Plenty of winners as sharemarket sets a new record - Agencies ##

Mini energy utility successfully lists -  Agencies ##

Delay for Hospira's takeover of Mayne - Agencies ##

Telstra jumped broadband gun: rivals - Matt O'Sullivan

Graincorp looking to increased exports - Agencies ##

super helps us to No. 1 in managed funds - Agencies ##

PAGE 19:

Macs on the march in Birmingham, Taiwan - Bloomberg with agencies ##

Retailers get on the noe - and shoppers like it - Yian Mul  The Washington Post

GM could buy into Malaysia's Proton car - Soraya Permatasari and Angus Whitley - Bloomberg ##

Achievements show Saunders is no reject - Rebecca urban

NZ printer's Ausie bid gets the nod. - Agencies  ##

It's not that I mind reading business news from overseas, or about foreign interests.  In fact I like it.  I just don't like paying good money for a newspaper that has been cobbled together from itsy-bitsy stuff that some editor has downloaded from the internet.

I wonder if the Fairfax Media CEO David Kirk thinks this is a good thing or a bad thing.

Good to save costs?  Or you can't fool all of the people all of the time?

Comments

[Simon Sharwood]

Would the SMH business section have had more content at a 'normal' time, or just the same stuff by staffers?

[Bob Meade]

Well, you can look at today's issue Simon. Pages 19, 20 and 21. So the comparison of 3 print pages is parallel.

By a quick visual estimate there's only about 40% agency and syndicated content today, so I'd say there's a few more journalists back from summer leave.

Next week should see it back to normal.