News Corp staff are bracing for wide-ranging job cuts as part of an impending restructure that will deliver casualties across the company’s middle management and senior editor ranks.
The restructure has already created winners and losers, with the weekday editors of Sydney’s Daily Telegraph, Ben English, and the Herald Sun in Melbourne, Sam Weir, seemingly winning the power struggle against their weekend counterparts.
Rupert Murdoch passed the baton as chairman of News Corp to Lachlan who is presiding over the restructure of its Australian operations.
The fate of Nick Papps (Herald Sun weekend editor) and Mick Carroll (News Corp Australia’s national weekend editor and chair of the editorial board) is less certain.
Carroll, a veteran editor of The Sunday Telegraph who added the Saturday Telegraph to his duties several years ago, is heading up the group’s coverage of the Paris Olympics in July.
Peter Blunden, News Corp’s national executive editor who supervises the national desk which includes some specialist writers, some sport, real estate and the newswire, has let it be known that he is staying. News Corp declined to comment.
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The restructure, which will include the appointment of a single editor overseeing its major tabloids in a seven-day-a-week newspaper operation, is now the main focus for News Corp after chief executive Robert Thomson and chairman Lachlan Murdoch concluded their global budget meetings earlier this week.
Some of the visiting global executives have already departed, including the UK editors, led by News UK boss Rebekah Brooks, who were caught unawares by the snap general election announcement earlier in the week.
The key executives stayed at the luxury Capella Sydney hotel near Circular Quay.