News Corp unveils new digital leadership structure
News Corp Australia has announced changes to its digital leadership structure.
News Corp Australia has announced changes to its digital leadership structure, with Julian Delany and Dominic Hatfield getting new responsibilities as the publisher separates digital and technology.
Currently managing director of News Digital Networks Australia, Delany will expand his current responsibilities to include digital platforms and strategy, as well as taking on Food Corp.
Delany’s remit already includes subscriptions, product delivery, content optimisation and digital revenue.
As part of the changes, Dominic Hatfield will move to the new role of chief information officer, adding business intelligence and enterprise data to his role.
And Adam King, chief data officer, is leaving News Corp to join Fox Sports in a new role. Fox Sports is wholly owned by News Corp.
The changes come at a pivotal moment for publishers like News Corp as they develop new digital platforms and strive to understand how they can best be used to attract audiences and drive revenue.
Paid content offerings, meanwhile, are becoming ever more important as Google and Facebook take a fast-growing share of the digital advertising pie. Digital subscriptions and other new sources of revenue have provided an antidote for publishers struggling to compete with a digital ad duopoly in Google and Facebook.
The changes were prompted by the resignation of News Corp Australia chief digital officer Nicole Sheffield, who is leaving to pursue other opportunities.
The role had responsibility for digital and technology, and, as such, it will not be directly replaced because of the new structure, which separates the two functions.
“These changes reflect our ambition to create the digital organisation that best aligns digital and technology with our strategy and objectives of increasing audiences and their engagement, being more efficient and driving profitable growth,” said Michael Miller, regional chairman of News Corp Australia, in an email to staff.
“We are moving to a model that realigns the responsibilities under digital and technology to best reflect how we will serve both our external consumers and our internal customers.
“The result is a clear digital ecosystem to deliver on consumer product and client solutions along with a sharper focus for technology to allow it to evolve into a true enterprise and information function.”
The moves comes after News Corp Australia appointed Nicholas Gray publisher of News Prestige Network as part as part of a realignment of its luxury titles, with new roles for Edwina McCann and Fiona Nilsson.
While continuing in his current role as chief executive of The Australian, Gray will take responsibility for the commercial, product and marketing functions of News Prestige Network, a one-stop luxury and prestige ad network launched last year.
News Prestige Network combined the digital and print audiences of individual titles across separate business units for the first time.
Now, the publisher is bringing together its prestige mastheads as one Prestige Network publishing division, containing The Australian as well as Vogue Australia, Vogue Living and GQ Australia. The division will also include The Australian’s magazines: Wish, Mansion, The Deal and The Weekend Australian Magazine.
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