It’s no longer a case of if Fairfax Media will shut the weakly selling, loss-making weekday editions of The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age, but a case of when judging by reports of private briefings the company’s CEO Greg Hywood has conducted with staff this week. Details of the meetings surfaced in The Australian Financial Review this morning. Interestingly, the AFR story of the briefing was on that paper’s website this morning, but not on smh.com.au, nor did it make it into the six-page SMH business section this morning.

In the AFR report:

“[Hywood] said ‘hundreds of millions’ of printing and distribution costs would come out as the company exited Monday-to-Friday print and moved to a 24/7 digital publishing focus. About 65 per cent of those mastheads’ advertising revenue is generated on the weekend.”

The AFR said Hywood “played down” suggestions that Fairfax would be broken up to liberate sharemarket value claimed to be in its Domain property business (which actually dominates weekend advertising in the papers).

“Mr Hywood also noted the ‘inevitability’ of a weekend-only print model for some mastheads, but said quality journalism had a strong future within the group while a lower cost base and fast growing businesses such as Domain would drive shareholder value,” the AFR reported.