Just time for a cautionary tale for Greg Hywood, CEO of Fairfax Media. When I interviewed him a few weeks ago, you may remember, I asked him if there would be more cuts to Fairfax's journalistic staff. And he responded...

Greg Hywood: What I'll be saying is that we'll be investing in creative journalism, the journalism that people read. — ABC, Media Watch, 25th April, 2011

A couple of weeks later, Fairfax announced that it would be cutting around 80 sub-editing jobs in its Sydney and Melbourne metro newspapers, and outsourcing their work to an outfit called Pagemasters.

Last Wednesday, someone got a lot too creative. The Canberra Times published this Trivia Quiz, on a page put together by Pagemasters

1.Which private detective has been played by Richard Roundtree and Samuel L Jackson...? — The Canberra Times,18th May, 2011

Answer: John Shaft

2.What is the official currency of Vietnam? — The Canberra Times,18th May, 2011

Answer: The dong.

5.Which British musician released the album Every Picture Tells a Story in 1971? — The Canberra Times,18th May, 2011

Answer: Rod Stewart.

Beginning to see the pattern? It went on all the way to question 10,

Which American novelist wrote the sci-fi novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? — The Canberra Times,18th May, 2011

Answer: Philip K Dick.

Ho ho ho, tee hee hee, nudge nudge, wink wink, every answer included one of the dozens of slang terms for 'penis'.

The prank hasn't caused much amusement among the bosses at Pagemasters.

It told Media Watch this morning:

An individual...in our Puzzles typesetting department circumvented the usual checking procedures and has been dismissed. — Timothy Campbell, Managing Editor, Pagemasters Victoria, 23th May, 2011

And no one was laughing at The Canberra Times either. As one Times staffer wrote to Media Watch, it shows the danger of outsourcing parts of the paper to people who don't even live in the same city...

This bloke would have caught the bus home chuckling to himself at how he pranked an unwitting bunch of people in far-off Canberra... But I'm the guy left trying to explain it to my neighbours and the woman behind the counter at the shop. — Staff Member, Canberra Times, 23th May, 2011

Or, as Greg Hywood so cogently put it...

We need to get our journalism better and better, more interesting, more focussed on our market, more focussed on our readers... — ABC, Media Watch, 25th April, 2011

And less focussed on Johnsons, Dicks and Dongs.

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