"Fairfax of the Future"

• 1,900 jobs to be cut over the next 3 years
• 300 jobs to be shed in Metro division over 2-3 months
• 2 Metro dailies to shrink to tabloid size on March 4, 2013
• Digital paywalls to be introduced in 2013
• 2 printing presses to be shut down by June 2014
• Expected annual savings of $235 million by 2015

“Fairfax is today announcing fundamental changes to the way we do business,” reads the memo that one of Australia’s largest media companies lodged with the Australian Securities Exchange (ASX) on Monday, sending shockwaves through the press.

The changes, which include the elimination of 1,900 jobs over the next three years, are expected to reduce costs by $235 million over the same period, and to provide Fairfax with the flexibility to shift toward a “digital-only model if that is what is required in the future,” says the document, entitled “Fairfax of the Future.”

British Prime Minister David Cameron appeared before the Leveson Inquiry today to answer questions about his relationship with the press. The Guardian has detailed coverage.

Journalism.co.uk reports that the Times has launched an “experimental Tumblr page” for its Opinion section, which will offer “a flavour of what our columnists and leader writers do,” outside of the Times’s strict paywall.

Jonathan Stray has published a piece for Nieman Lab arguing that, in the modern media environment, we need new, better models for crime reporting. Stray has also led a Twitter discussion about how journalists can cover crime, and has collected the results together in a Storify at the bottom of the article.

The Guardian’s Roy Greenslade reports that ELLE is planning to produce an issue edited entirely by interns. The magazine launched a competition two weeks ago to find young people to fill 10 editorial roles for its October edition, and has received just under 400 applications, writes Greenslade.

The Guardian correspondent in Athens, Jon Henley, reports that former journalists from Greece’s second-largest paper Eleftherotypia – which, due to lack of money, has only published two editions since December last year – are returning to work unpaid to put out third special edition of the paper, which will be published the day before the country’s general election. Henley writes that this could well be the paper’s final edition, and notes that former Eleftherotypia journalists have not been paid since August 2011.

AFP writes that former British prime minister John Major has directly contradicted Rupert Murdoch’s assertion before the Leveson Inquiry that he had "never asked a prime minister for anything." John Major told the inquiry today that, during a dinner in 1997, Murdoch had demanded Major change his policy on Europe, reports AFP.

Renowned newspaper designer Mario Garcia profiles a new African tablet computer named Way C – meaning “light of the starts.” The device has been designed by a young entrepreneur named Vérone Mankou, whose company VMK is based in Brazzaville, Congo.

The Economist asks whether non-profit-funded journalism will be enough to make up for a decline in the commercial news industry in this thoughtful article.

In a new blog post, the editor of data and innovation at Thompson Reuters, Reg Chua, takes a step back from the heated debate around the merits of paywalls vs. free online content and addresses some broader issues about how news should be funded.

Felix Salmon, also at Reuters, has written a blog post about the merits of syndicating blog content. There can be real benefits for bloggers, he argues, but the attitude to syndication may be poisoned if there is not enough communication between those on the editorial side and business/sales staff.