News Corp cuts 20 journalists, with The Australian and Herald Sun spared

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 the news.com.au website. Managers emailed staff on Tuesday evening to set up meetings about the decision.

Of the 20 layoffs, more will come from The Daily Telegraph than any other paper. No regional staff or journalists from The Australian or the Herald Sun will be made redundant. The layoffs are part of the media group’s wider effort to save about $65 million.

Five roles, three of which are voluntary redundancies, will come from News Corp’s production staff including subeditors. 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 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.

Former Network national editor Lillian Saleh moves into the role of content director for news in the free titles division with new editor Mick Carroll.

Industry union the Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance said it was working with affected members to ensure they were treated with dignity and respect, received their entitlements and were offered the chance of redeployment.

“While this round of redundancies is numerically small, for those affected this is a stressful period, and each position that is lost will have an impact of reducing the masthead’s ability to cover news in their community and serve the reading public,” the union’s acting media director, Michelle Rae, said.

The wider restructure has already led to senior executives, sales staff and some editors leaving the company. Lisa Muxworthy, the editor of news.com.au, has been the most high-profile departure.

Employee bargaining documents show the company’s editorial head count has reduced by just under 200 since 2021. News Corp now employs just under 1000 journalists.

Nine, the publisher of this masthead, is making up to 90 staff redundant across its publishing division, which includes The Age, The Sydney Morning Herald and The Australian Financial Review.

As many as 40 staff members will also be made redundant in Nine’s Pedestrian Group division, with youth titles including Vice, Refinery29 and others also set to be shuttered.

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