With the SMH brand celebrating its 185th year, record readership figures and even a $27m profit, further cuts have provoked anger among Fairfax staff

As the Sydney Morning Herald looks forward to its 185th birthday next month staff had been celebrating the fact that the masthead is the most widely read publication in the country, enjoying a 1.2m lead over its nearest competitor, Murdoch’s Daily Telegraph.

And with the appointment of the popular veteran Judith Whelan as editor plus a $27m half-year profit, for once, there had been some reason to celebrate. It had been a tough couple of weeks with the paper’s proud staff having to wear the shame of the masthead publishing a false story of rape written by Paul Sheehan, who is now on indefinite leave after failing to check the veracity of the story.

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But the warm glow didn’t last. At 11am on Thursday an email hit the inboxes of journalists at the SMH, the Age and the Australian Financial Review saying there would be more cuts.

In 2012 Fairfax cut 1,900 jobs, some 20% of them in editorial, with about 150 journalism jobs lost on the metropolitan mastheads. One in four journalists, photographers and artists lost their job in the newsrooms and decades of experience walked out the door.

Since then the papers have continued to shed jobs, in the regional newspaper arm of the business in particular, but also on the big mastheads.

But the latest cuts are deep: the equivalent of 120 journalists would have to go from the news and business sections in Sydney and Melbourne. Estimates vary but it could be as many as one in four again walking out the door.

Within hours the highly-unionised staff was out on strike – for three days. While not unprecedented, no-one can remember the last time journalists voted to walk off the job for three editions of the paper, from Thursday to first shift on Monday.

Staff say they felt a serious strike was warranted because a 24-hour mini protest wouldn’t register the level of anger and hurt they feel. Editorial director Sean Aylmer did not agree, emailing staff to remind them the strike was “unlawful”.

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“When employees take unlawful industrial action we have no choice but to dock their pay,” Aylmer said. “No one should feel pressured to take industrial action at any time. And it’s wrong for anyone to pressure someone else to take unlawful industrial action.”

But staff were not bowed. They were reeling from the size of the cuts and the impact it would have on the ability of the papers to practice good journalism. “The mood in the room was filthy,” one said. “People want our readers to know that this is a serious assault on our ability to deliver what is needed for them: really important stories about the cities of Sydney and Melbourne.”

The angry stop-work meetings came after Aylmer had addressed the newsroom for an hour telling assembled staff they had to face the reality of the media climate and that management would try to save as many jobs as possible by making cuts elsewhere. But there would be voluntary redundancies because they had to save the equivalent of the cost of 120 full-time jobs, said to be about $10m.

But one comment from Aylmer really had them worried. He said the newsrooms had to focus on “what we do best” like state and federal politics, sport, business, international, justice and breaking news and that Fairfax journalists of the future needed to focus on “effective” content, which many took to mean stories which did well online. In other words, they should focus on stories which attract traffic.

“So people are asking what does this mean for urban affairs and health for example, and for everything not on the list?” one staffer said.

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Union boss Paul Murphy of the Media Entertainment and Arts Alliance said it was the “angriest” meeting he had ever attended.

“They really shouldered the burden of change; they are committed to the success of Fairfax as a company that produces quality, independent journalism and they’re all working harder than ever with less,” Murphy said. “And to receive yet another announcement from the company which says 120 jobs to go and that’s it. No plan, no strategy around it. That’s why they’re angry.”