For seasoned consumers of Australian media, watching what are surely the last chapters of Fairfax as we know it be written is a bit like the last days of the Soviet Union. There are occasional reports of purges, but instead of looking at who’s standing where to watch the May Day parade, we are left to contemplate the number of sub-editing errors and the ratio of real news to celebrity gossip for a clue as to what is going on behind the scenes.