Staff told ‘big cuts’ will include 55 editorial posts as executive chairman says newsrooms need ‘new skills’

This article is more than 1 year old

This article is more than 1 year old

News Corp staff will be hit by a widespread round of targeted redundancies, including 55 journalists, within days.

The executive chairman, Michael Miller, has warned publicly that long-term employees who lack digital skills would be leaving the company.

Management held meetings across departments on Monday and told staff “big cuts” would be coming. The redundancies in editorial were not voluntary and would be based on a new assessment of the skills needed in a digital newsroom. Production staff are likely to be targeted for redundancy as the production processes would be “leaner”.

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Staff would be told if they were on the hit list within days. Some voluntary redundancies might be granted.

The management briefings followed a number of press interviews in which Miller said the company would have to downsize to remain profitable and that it was looking for “new skills”.

“We’ll see some skills come into the company and unfortunately some people who have been here a while will be leaving,” Miller told the Australian. “That’s acknowledging the business and the consumers are changing and the business needs to change with that.

“As we get more data, we probably need some new skills journalistically into the business and we’re increasingly bringing in audio, video, social.”

Miller said the industry was evolving and journalists needed to be multi-skilled to be valuable to the company.

He named the Australian’s Hedley Thomas, who produced The Teacher’s Pet podcast, and Trent Dalton who has written an award-winning novel, as examples.

Miller said the cuts were necessary despite the number of digital subscriptions across the company reaching half a million.

“The Australian is soon to ­announce it’s passed 140,000 digital paid subscribers, which is past the peak of its print daily circulation. That’s the third-fastest after the New York Times and Washington Post growth in the world. That is world class.”

The Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance (Meaa) said talks with editors at various mastheads were already under way.

The director of media for Meaa, Katelin McInerney, said cutting experienced staff would hurt readers as the newsrooms were already very stretched.

“Staff are already deeply angered by this late-in-the-financial-year round of cuts,” McInerney said. “And are absolutely exhausted by two years of back-to-back redundancies at a time when subscriptions are growing and readership is up.”

A spokeswoman for News Corp Australia confirmed the staff briefings had taken place across the country.

“We are making changes to our newsrooms to meet our ever-changing consumer information needs,” she said.

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“We will continue to invest in premium journalism as the key to driving subscriptions. We will see new people come into our newsrooms, people with different skills and talents. Some roles will be impacted by these changes and there will be a number of redundancies.”

In media interviews Miller also praised his editors for their election coverage and said they had their fingers on the pulse of the voters.

“I don’t see [the election] as being a win for News Corp,” he said.

“I congratulate our ­editors, who were more in touch with the mind and mood of the Australian population.

“I think more than anything else our editors consistently read into the ambitions, the fears and really the motivations of our communities and saw the key issues for what they were.

“I think we saw consistency around back pocket and impact on cost of living, which was a real concern.”