News Corp Australia has tasked editors with putting forward editorial jobs for redundancy as part of a global move to cut costs.
On Monday, unionised News Corp staff were told in an email that management had refused to negotiate with the Media, Entertainment & Arts Alliance (MEAA) for a “fair redundancy” process, after indicating that editors will start making calls on between 30 to 40 editorial redundancies.
News Corp editors are in the final stages of deciding who will be shown the door, Crikey understands, as staff mull voluntary redundancies.
Up to 40 jobs are expected to go as part of a push to cut up to 200 people from across the local business, after a 30% earnings dip last month prompted News Corp chief executive Robert Thomson to announce a 5% headcount reduction.
“It’s not something you want to do, but it’s something you have to do in these circumstances to build on what is [a] robust platform,” he told a Morgan Stanley conference earlier this month.
News Corp’s local operation — which includes The Australian, The Daily Telegraph, the Herald Sun, news.com.au and Sky News — employs more than 8000 people across Australia.
The company’s global cost-cutting drive is understood to put more than 1200 employees on the line around the world, with up to 200 set to go in Australia, mainly across The Australian and the company’s Sydney and Melbourne tabloids.
“Obviously, a surge in interest rates and acute inflation had a tangible impact on all of our businesses,” Thomson said while presenting News Corp’s second-quarter earning results.
“But we believe these challenges are more ephemeral than eternal. Just as our company passed the stress-test of the pandemic with record profits, the initiatives now under way — including an expected 5% headcount reduction, or around 1250 positions this calendar year — will create a robust platform for future growth.”
Cuts to editorial jobs at News Corp Australia come as other media companies try to hem expenses heading into the second financial quarter, with a view to square away all redundancies and cost-cutting activities before the end of the financial year.
In Western Australia, Australian Community Media announced it would shutter four major regional news outlets across the state’s southwest, including the Mandurah Mail, the Augusta-Margaret River Mail, the Bunbury Mail, and the Busselton-Dunsborough Mail.
The mastheads will stop publishing at the end of April, according to a letter sent to staff this week, unless the company is able to find a buyer. If not, the mastheads — and the jobs that come with them — would be heavily consolidated, if not folded altogether.
“ACM has had no choice but to consider options in the face of a number of challenges faced by the company and the media industry more broadly, which have been exacerbated by the 80% increase to newsprint costs, which are well publicised,” it read.
MEAA WA director Tiffany Venning told the ABC the information gap left by the newspapers was a concerning matter for residents living outside of metropolitan areas across the state, and “just a really sad situation” for the communities they cover.
