The seven-day journalists' strike at Fairfax Media is a clash between old and new Australia. Few of the striking journalists work for The Australian Financial Review, which is publishing as usual. Most of the $30 million in cost cuts sought by the company will come from former broadsheet newspapers the Sydney Morning Herald and Melbourne's The Age.

Like department stores or free-to-air television, our Fairfax stablemates cannot sustain the cost base built up before their readers could become smartphone publishers and before Google and Facebook algorithms siphoned off the rivers of classified advertising.

Fairfax has dealt with the digital disruption as well as any other traditional Australian media company as it has built new digital businesses such as Domain and Stan from its large networked audience. Its market capitalisation now exceeds that of all three free-to-air TV networks combined. Now it seeks to reduce its cost base to a level that can provide a foundation for growth, just like rival News Corporation Australia, which last month announced $40 million in cost cuts.

Staff walked out in protest of Fairfax Media's staff cuts. Joe Castro

Yet reports of the death of Fairfax journalism are greatly exaggerated: its three big mastheads will still employ more than 500 journalists, photographers and artists. The Financial Review regrets any job losses among our colleagues. But, coming amid news that union membership has fallen to only 10 per cent of private sector employment, the journalist union's attempt to punish the company appears old-fashioned and counter-productive. Neither a strike nor an unlikely advertiser boycott will increase the revenue the mastheads need to employ their journalists. It's as futile as blaming the readers.

Amid all this, the Financial Review suggests there still is a commercial model for quality journalism. Our print and digital readership is growing more quickly than any other national or metro masthead. As Fairfax chief executive Greg Hywood stressed this week, the Financial Review's paid subscribers are growing even faster. And our advertising revenue is also growing, not falling, even in print.