News Corp staff are in a panic as the company prepares to announce a reported $65 million worth of job cuts.
The Sydney Morning Herald reports the company’s global bosses have arrived at News Corp’s Holt Street headquarters in Sydney for the annual budget meeting, usually held overseas, with top editors at the various capital city mastheads flying in from around the country.
News Corp sources told Crikey staff were frustrated with being drip-fed information about the company’s future via leaks in the Nine newspapers.
“We’re getting all these leaks in the AFR, but nothing to staff. It’s so frustrating,” said one source.
“It’s crazy, everyone is very conspiratorial. I’ve spent more time talking about the restructure than doing my work this week.”
Staff expect to find out their fate next week, although there is no clarity on a specific announcement date.
“I heard we’re all finding out next week. I’ve heard both Wednesday and Monday.”
The Financial Review reported earlier this month that News Corp Australia was set to be divided into three divisions — “fast and free”, which includes news.com.au and the e-commerce platforms; “premium communities”, which includes the capital city mastheads and sports; and “prestige”, which accounts for national broadsheet The Australian as well as titles like Vogue Australia. It also reported that beleaguered professional services giant PwC was engaged to lead the restructure process.
The Sydney Morning Herald reported there is a greater role expected for the company’s national desk, which includes sports, the internal newswire service NCA NewsWire, as well as a bevy of senior specialists. However, there has been no clarity on the future of the company’s “hyperlocal” mastheads — in 2023, community reporters in New South Wales previously under the NewsLocal banner were absorbed into the Daily Telegraph, with a number of cuts associated with the change.
While our sources hadn’t personally seen the company’s chair Lachlan Murdoch or UK boss Rebekah Brooks (best known for her role as News of the World editor over the course of the infamous phone-hacking scandal) in the office, there are reportedly “a lot of global editors around”, with “people from overseas publications” also spotted.
“The leaks have to be coming from the people making these decisions,” a source told Crikey.
“It’s a very small group making these decisions.”
It is understood that the restructure will target the mastheads in the capital cities, with the tabloids shifting to a consolidated seven-day roster from the current system, which delineates the weekday and weekend teams.
The reported cuts come on the back of 1,250 lost jobs in 2023, which were blamed on “a surge in interest rates and acute inflation”.
At the time, chief executive Robert Thomson said he believed those “challenges were more ephemeral than eternal.”
Yesterday, News Corp also announced a deal with ChatGPT developer OpenAI that would allow the service to display news from titles like The Australian, news.com.au, The Daily Telegraph, The Courier-Mail, The Advertiser and the Herald Sun, following an AI-focused deal with Google in February.
News Corp was contacted for comment but did not respond in time for publication.
