This article is more than 1 year old

This article is more than 1 year old

The publisher of the Sun and the Sun on Sunday is launching a large-scale programme of job cuts as it seeks to slash costs at the loss-making tabloids.

It is understood that staff at the titles, of whom about 500 to 600 work in editorial, were told of the plans earlier this week.

News Group Newspapers (NGN), a subsidiary of Rupert Murdoch’s News UK, which publishes the titles, has initially called for voluntary redundancies in an effort to hit savings targets as part of a wide-ranging review of all parts of the editorial and commercial sides of the business. Staff have been told, however, that compulsory redundancies will follow if the targets cannot be met.

A News UK spokesperson said: “News UK is in the process of reviewing all areas of its businesses to ensure we are maximising resources and to enable future revenue growth.

“As part of this process, we need to reduce complexity and review all of our costs so that we can focus our investment on delivering high-quality editorial content to existing and new audiences.

“Staff at the Sun have been invited to apply for voluntary redundancy. We cannot comment any further at the current time.”

There is not thought to be a specific headcount target in mind, but indications of the scale of the savings sought mean the number of redundancies is likely to be large. One source said about a quarter of the cuts are expected to come from the Sun’s online operation.

The news comes months after NGN reported a tripling of pre-tax losses to £91.2m in its most recent financial results, for the year to 1 July 2018.

Total revenue fell from £424m to £401m as sales dropped 8% and 9% respectively for its daily and Sunday papers.

News UK’s move comes as the newspaper industry faces up to another tough year, with readers and advertisers continuing to drain away to digital media, the lion’s share being taken by Google and Facebook.

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Group M, the global media division of WPP, predicts that the national newspaper ad market will fall 2.2% this year to £807m, a significant improvement on the falls of 5% to 11% recorded between 2015 and 2018.

Mail Online, which is owned by the parent company of the Daily Mail, Mail on Sunday and Metro, reported a strong recovery in ad revenues for the first half of the year last week.

Revenues were up 25% year on year, compared with 2% in the first half last year, thanks to an algorithm change by Facebook hammering reader numbers – more than making up for declines at the Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday.