It is hard to understand why it has taken Fairfax Media more than three months to make the trio of relatively tame board appointments that were announced quietly last Friday.

While the appointees are beyond reproach, as a group they do little to improve the situation. The board still lacks anybody with an inside understanding of journalism.

Given that quality journalism is Fairfax’s main “point of difference” in the crowded media marketplace, it is an extraordinary oversight. One more board place will be filled in the next few months, chairman Roger Corbett claims. We can only hope it will be filled by someone with editorial experience.

Remember Fairfax’s trouble of late last year? There was an acknowledgement by all concerned of an urgent need for renewal following the forced departure of chairman Ron Walker and his replacement by retailer Corbett.

So what is the result? Linda Nicholls, the corporate director from central casting, will head the board’s audit and risk committee. She has an unblemished record as a corporate adviser and director of leading companies, and of course she is female, and from Melbourne, which helps to balance the board.

But she is old generation rather than new generation, and her appointment hardly seems to be a response to the urgent strategic problems facing the company.

Sandra McPhee, formerly from Qantas, is also a well regarded career company director, and another woman. But it is hard to see anything in her background that suggests she will be able to tackle the enormous structural changes facing the industry.

New Zealand TradeMe founder Sam Morgan is the most exciting appointment. The rags-to-riches story of TradeMe’s founding and success  is testimony to his smarts and entrepreneurial vigor. TradeMe has been one of Fairfax Media’s successful acquisitions. Morgan has new media understanding, but whether he is broad enough to contribute to solving Fairfax’s many problems remains to be seen.

And why has it taken so long? None of these people were exactly hiding under a rock. Two career directors, and Morgan, who would have been well known to Fairfax Media for a long time.

And why have people with directly relevant media experience, most notably Steve Harris, former publisher of The Age and also formerly editor in chief of both of Melbourne’s newspapers, so far been overlooked?

One more board position remains to be filled, but given that Harris has already offered himself to shareholders at the last AGM, one can assume that if he was going to be appointed it would have happened by now.

As it is, there is no evidence in these appointments that Fairfax is grappling with the need for innovation or making the necessary big shifts in strategic thinking.

It’s all a bit underwhelming. And I hope I am wrong.

* Declaration: Steve Harris is a board member of the Foundation for Public Interest Journalism at Swinburne University of Technology. I am the chair.