More staff members at News Corp’s Australian titles are being made redundant this week, as management finalises plans to make savings across the company’s mastheads.
Twenty editorial staff would lose their jobs, said people with direct knowledge of the plans, speaking on condition of anonymity. Ten of the staff would be taking voluntary redundancies.
News Corp is making 20 journalists redundant across its titles.Credit: Louise Kennerley
Titles affected include The Courier Mail, The Daily Telegraph, The Hobart Mercury, Adelaide Advertiser and News Corp’s free news and lifestyle division, which includes website news.com.au. Managers emailed staff on Tuesday evening to set up meetings about the decision.
The Daily Telegraph is the largest affected of the mastheads, as part of the media group’s wider effort to save about $65 million. No regional staff nor journalists from The Australian and Herald Sun will be made redundant.
Five roles, including three voluntary redundancies, will come from News Corp’s Centre of Production Excellence.
The 20 roles make up the entire editorial component of the cost-saving initiatives, this masthead was told.
News Corp declined to comment.
Meanwhile, the editor of News Corp’s sports news subscription platform CODE Sports, Alex Brown, left the company last week. He has since joined Nine-owned Stan for an Olympics-based role.
Former associate editor for the weekend Telegraph Sarah Blake is also set to return as national editor for Network News on July 21, according to an internal email seen by this masthead. Blake returns from Seven’s new digital masthead The Nightly, where she spent four months as chief correspondent.