Amanda Meade at Guardian Australia is reporting that News Corp is set to put hundreds of people out of work as it cuts jobs as part of structural change moving to digital only publishing of some local and regional newspapers.
News Corp Australia is poised to cut hundreds of jobs as it moves towards digital-only publishing for many of its local and regional papers and more copy sharing among its metropolitan mastheads the Daily Telegraph and the Herald Sun.
The executive chairman of News Corp Australasia, Michael Miller, has hinted the company is on the brink of upheaval, saying last week it was evolving from “a network of newspapers” to “Australia’s leading journalism network”.
The job cuts Miller has warned are “inevitable” after the collapse of the advertising market during the pandemic are expected to hit the publisher’s local and regional newspaper staff as well as the major mastheads as soon as this week.
Sources say the cuts could be as high as 30% of staff across the company and many will be force redundancies, rather than voluntary.
This move, if accurately reported, will send shockwaves through the Australian publishing industry. Hundreds of people losing their livelihoods is dreadful for them, their families and the broader community. It will also impact retailers of the newspapers closed. However, smart retailers will have seen this coming.
While a tough move, it is inevitable with print circulation down and online not delivering ad revenue to match what publishing companies had become used to achieving through their print platforms.
Smart newsagents already have businesses that do not rely on the regular newspaper shopper for survival. Plenty of us are attracting shoppers for other products, non traditional agency products.
These changes, if they happen along the lines of the Guardian report, will not be the end of it.