News Corp NSW executive general manager Brett Clegg told Adnews it was the largest investment for the paper in a decade and, other than a name change, included new real estate, car and business sections.
Then there was the launch of another masthead bearing Saturday in its title - the Saturday Paper. Although competing in different markets - the new arrival more upmarket than the rebadged paper - the quest for advertisers is incessant for print mastheads in a time of declining revenues.
The inaugural run of this new weekly paper, launched by Black Inc publisher Morry Schwartz, is fascinating because many newspaper publishers in Western economies are considering doing the opposite and winding up print in favour of digital-only editions.
Schwartz, who also publishes Quarterly Essay and the Monthly, has launched his new printed masthead for $3 a week in Sydney, Melbourne and Canberra. It is also available online and as an app.
Schwartz told rival the Age on Friday that advertising sales were heartening and he expected the Saturday Paper to be profitable within a few years, with an aim to "sell between 60,000 and 80,000 copies a week".
Schwartz has a passion for long-form journalism and has assembled a line-up of experienced award-winning journalists under the youthful editorship of Erik Jensen, including former Fairfax business editor Kirsty Simpson and Fairfax veteran David Marr (who also signed on with Australia's online edition of the Guardian Australia last year).
Schwartz has assembled other names in niche areas outside traditional journalism such as novelist Christos Tsiolkas (author of The Slap and Barracuda) to critique film, and chef Andrew McConnell (owner of Cutler & Co) as food editor.
Schwartz has indicated the Saturday Paper will carry serious journalism, providing a space for long-form writing on subjects that speak to Australia's intellectual and political life without the distractions of the lighter side of newspapers that proliferated in the 1990s such as celebrity gossip and lifestyle pull-outs.
This is hardly a ground-breaking approach: when the Australian was launched in 1964 it promised to bring readers "impartial information and independent thinking that are essential to the further advance of our country".
The Australian also springs to mind through a stoush with the ABC's Media Watch over the paper's profitability, leading editor-in-chief Chris Mitchell to confirm to media website mUmbrella that the paper had not been profitable since 2008. So why, if the Australian is losing money and Fairfax is shedding hundreds of jobs, cutting costs and closing printing plants, would Schwartz launch a print newspaper? The answer might have something to do with a counter view about newspapers' future offered by US academic Professor Philip Meyer who maintains that hardcopy newspapers could survive if they jettison frivolous content and target quality journalism to a smaller discerning audience and provide it less frequently.
The newspapers that survive will probably do so with some kind of hybrid content: analysis, interpretation and investigative reporting in a print product that appears less than daily, combined with constant updating and reader interaction on the web.
Schwartz has already said that his paper will do only the things a newspaper is really good for.
In the opinion of Meyer, that role is to gain public trust through quality journalism. According to Meyer, trusted print newspapers provide a counter narrative to spin, advertising and other manipulated communications that overload us daily.
Certainly, Super Saturday is a symptom of the changing field of journalism. Since newspapers began hundreds of years ago journalism has changed in response to struggles at one of three levels: competition between journalists within an institution; media producers competing within the same market; and competition between different types of media producers in different markets such as online, television, radio and print.
In Australia, in the past year, this competition has shown itself in the form of the online arrival of Guardian Australia - which recently announced a Melbourne expansion - and the imminent entry of Britain's Daily Mail tabloid, in partnership with Ninemsn.
Both are employing local journalists and provide an alternative to the duopoly of Fairfax Media and News Corp. Other smaller start-ups include the New Daily, which hired a dozen journalists last year using innovative funding from industry superannuation funds.
But, while Super Saturday is worth noting because it speaks to shifting power dynamics within the Australian media, other organs of power seem not to change.
Meyer understood that "readers need and want to be equipped with truth-based defences".
Let's hope Super Saturday gives us, the readers, this.
Andrea Carson is a lecturer in media and politics and honorary research fellow, at the Centre for Advancing Journalism at the University of Melbourne.
theconservation.edu.au
