Fairfax back in the jobs game. Fairfax Media may have missed the classifieds moving online to companies like SEEK, Carsales.com and REA, all of which today are more lucrative than the media empire, but the company doesn’t plan to make the same mistake twice. Through a new joint venture announced today, Fairfax is pinning its hopes on a three-year-old British start-up that aims to upend the way people search for job ads online.

Adzuna was launched in 2011 by two former Gumtree executives. In an interview with TechCrunch, co-founder Andrew Hunter said the Fairfax joint venture came about without him or co-founder Doug Monro even having to travel to Australia:

“Yes, I guess we are just a little start-up in Clapham doing a joint venture with one of the biggest media companies in APAC [the Asia-Pacific]. [We] were approached directly by Fairfax, who were looking to drive major change to the jobs market in Australia and had followed our growth and early success in Europe. So we started talking to Fairfax in early 2013 and after dozens of early morning conference calls, a mountain of paperwork and some fairly hefty legal fees, we inked the deal just before Christmas.”

Adzuna’s Australian chief operating officer, Nat Thomas, told Crikey Fairfax’s MyCareer website and paper lift-out would continue. But the deal will give Adzuna massive exposure through Fairfax’s print and digital media properties. “We’ll be able to take advantage of huge media presence that Fairfax has in this market,” he said.

For Adzuna, exposure is vital. One in four jobs in Australia is advertised through SEEK, which said in 2013 it had 24% of the Australian job-ad market. Fairfax hopes Adzuna will help end SEEK’s dominance. Fairfax chief executive Greg Hywood told The Australian Financial Review the joint venture could result in the “disrupted becoming the disrupter”. SEEK capitalised on Fairfax’s lack of digital advertising in the early 2000s, taking many of its classified advertising and its associated lucrative income stream.

Adzuna had a soft Australian launch last May, and today has 89,000 job ads listed on its database — more than SEEK. However, direct comparisons are not entirely fair because Adzuna works rather differently. Thomas described it as “similar to Google”: “The difference is that we only operate in the jobs category. We search the web to find all advertised job ads, and then collage them all together on the one website. If you’re a job seeker, you can come to the one destination rather than going to many separate sites.”

Unlike SEEK and other traditional online job boards, Adzuna does not make money for an insertion fee. However, businesses can pay for priority placement of their ads, for which they will then be billed per click from a qualified candidate. Adzuna also offers social integration, allowing job seekers to see who they know on Facebook who works at a company they’re applying for, and also offers a data mining function showing what wages are typically associated with certain industries and positions.

The model looks promising, says Fusion Strategy media analyst Steve Allen. “If you and I were designing a competitor offering to SEEK, these are the sorts of things we’d look at,” he said. “It’s got things that’ll attract listers — the risk-free payment model — and it’s got things that’ll attract applications. And that’s a strategy.” — Myriam Robin

The Aussie TV to watch in 2014. We’re now just over a week away from the end of the Australian Open, and as any fan of local TV will tell you, when the tennis winds up on Channel Seven, the networks bring out its big guns. This year is shaping up to be a big one on our small screens. Although some networks haven’t announced quite as many shows as they had by this time last year, there are a few things that seem sure-fire ratings winners.

The ABC probably has the most interesting programming, with its local drama-heavy line-up, but Channel Ten will be looking to claw back some viewers with its “event TV” (industry slang for big-budget reality shows). Channel Nine has added a few new dramas, but it’s working to freshen up its reality line-up, and Channel Seven won’t be deviating too much from its winning formula of 2014. We’re also seeing the networks devoting more energy and resources into their secondary digital channels. Here are the new local shows you should keep an eye out for … — Ben Neutze (read the full story at Daily Review)

Video of the day. American late-night guy Jimmy Fallon reworked Born To Run to address Chris Christie’s sticky situation in New Jersey. And a certain Boss made a special appearance …

Front page of the day. The people of Egypt are voting on a new constitution. National daily Al Tahrir shows one woman making her voice heard …