News Corp to cut 50 jobs
Rupert Murdoch's News Corp Australia will slash about 50 staff members from its ranks in a redundancy round that is expected to affect major mastheads including The Australian and the metropolitan titles like The Herald Sun.
News Corp has declined to specify how many staff are involved, however the media union confirmed the figure would be "around 50" across all parts of the business - not just editorial - with some to be voluntary redundancies.
The decision comes a day after the media business' executive chairman Michael Miller defended the company's performance, the strength of newspapers and its embattled pay-TV platform Foxtel's performance in interviews across several major media publications.
A News Corp spokeswoman said the business was "reshaping and evolving ... across all areas to improve and strengthen how we operate to meet the changing demands of our consumers and customers.
"Our company is changing and different skills and talents are required to move forward," she said.
"We need to ensure we have the right people and the right skill sets. We will see changes to some roles and unfortunately, this means there will be a number of redundancies. "
A media source said the business was planning to focus more on news people were willing to pay to access and some collaboration across the mastheads. News Corp has increasingly focused on subscriptions over the past 18 months.
The Media Entertainment and Arts Alliance media director Katelin McInerney said it was "frustrating they continue to cut newsrooms at a time when they say they're doing better with print and subscriptions and readership".
The MEAA said about a third of the cuts are likely to come from Melbourne tabloid The Herald Sun and rural news service The Weekly Times.