12 sustAInABIlIty AnD CoRPoRAtE soCIAl REsPonsIBIlIty sUsTAINABILITY AND CORPORATE sOCIAL REsPONsIBILITY Fairfax Media operates within a commercial model. Ensuring the Company’s  financial sustainability is critical to our ability to continue to provide long-term  benefits to the community. Our financial sustainability cannot be separated from  our corporate social responsibility. Sustainability begins with being financially  sustainable and serving shareholders’ interests so as to be able to fulfil our  business objectives and serve our communities. Fairfax has a long and proud history of serving local communities with high-quality  independent content – across print, digital and radio – in Australia and New Zealand. Fairfax has deeply engaged audiences. Quality independent journalism is a central part  of Fairfax’s strategy to build, and profitably monetise, its large and highly engaged news  media audience. We have now successfully introduced digital subscriptions for The Sydney  Morning Herald and The Age. This initiative enhances resources and so too our ability to  continue to serve our audiences with quality content. What we do as a business contributes in a very meaningful way to community and to open  government – the bedrock of an effective functioning democracy. Fairfax facilitates public  debate on important issues, holds leaders and people of power and influence to account,  and informs the communities we serve.  There is a reason the media are called the ‘fourth estate’ – after the parliament, the judiciary  and the bureaucracy. Like us or loathe us, we are an important pillar of a healthy society.  Our job is to ask the questions that often people don’t want asked. We take seriously our  responsibility to the communities we serve. We strive to be as accurate and as fair-minded  in our reporting as possible. At Fairfax, we have set up internal processes to make this  happen and embrace self-regulation for the industry, which we fund extensively. The business changes being implemented at Fairfax over the past year are all about  ensuring the sustainability of the important work we do amid very real structural and  cyclical challenges in the media industry, both locally and abroad. We are taking steps  to ensure the Company is structured and operated in a sustainable way. 2012 Cole Classic at Manly’s Shelly Beach. PHOTO: PETER RAE THE SYDNEY MORNING HERALD PHOTOS 1440