A day after the Fairfax Media board closed with finality the doors of its boardroom to Australia's richest woman and the company's largest stakeholder Gina Rinehart, the media firm's stocks continued to plummet in value.

Shares of the company closed Thursday at 54 cents, down by 1.5 cents from the previous day's 55.5 cents when Ms Rinehart threatened to sell all her 19 per cent stake in the losing media firm.

Despite her owning the largest bloc of shares in Fairfax and being also the world's richest woman, Fairfax slammed the door in front of Ms Rinehart's face with finality as it ruled out granting her demands for three board seats, appointment as deputy chair and the power to fire and hire editors.

Fairfax stressed that it was her failure to agree to sign the editorial independence charter that caused Ms Rinehart her bid to become director of the company.

Perennial Value Managing Director John Murray, who expressed opposition to a 19 per cent stakeholder determining Fairfax's direction, said that if the mining mogul wants total control she should launch a take-over bid.

Another stakeholder, Simon Marais of Allan Gray who holds 9 per cent share, agreed with Mr Murray's suggestion.

"Shareholders will only vote for you if you agree to do things in everyone's best interests, not your own," The Australian quoted Mr Marais.

"She is not special. Just because you have a lot of money doesn't mean you should be able to make these sort of demands," said Mr Marais, who added that one good thing that came out of the Rinehart attempt was that the board started to listen to shareholders.

Ms Rinehart insisted that the reason she wanted to gain seats in the board was to make the media company more sustainable. Dipping advertising revenue caused major revamps in Fairfax operations including job cuts, closure of printing presses and shift to digital platform.

As a result, three editors resigned from their posts. Sean Aylmer, the new editor-in-chief of The Sydney Morning Herald, acknowledged that tough times warrant tough measures but questions the prevalent thinking that the print medium is dying.

"Everyone talks about print in decline. I don't totally buy that. I actually think that print doesn't have to decline. And particularly if we change The Sydney Morning Herald, you catch the train to work, you can read it in a compact size as opposed to, you know, the big broadsheet - that actually might gain us sales and that's certainly the way I'm thinking. I'm not thinking of it in decline in any way," ABC quoted Mr Aylmer.

He expressed confidence with the Fairfax board despite the financial decline of the company and added the current directors had not placed any sort of pressure on him.

"If we have a change in ownership, I have great confidence in our board and in our CEO in terms of allowing new owners, different owners, to come on board if that's what happens. And I'm pretty confident that those new owners, whoever they are, will actually abide by what the real value in Sydney Morning Herald and The Age is, and that's in its credibility, its quality journalism," Mr Aylmet said.

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