News Corp’s Game of Thrones begins as job cuts loom
By Stephen Brook and Colin Kruger
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.
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.
An announcement on the restructure is expected next week with the focus on rightsizing the company and setting News Corp up for the digital future. This is expected to eliminate a plethora of executive roles overseeing each masthead and each state.
The company, which has traditionally run in state-based fiefdoms, looks set to restructure into three silos. The metropolitan papers and websites would be in one silo, the free offerings including news.com.au in a second silo and prestige content including The Australian and luxury magazines including Vogue would be in a third silo.
News Corp Australia boss Michael Miller will look to pile on the pressure on Facebook and Instagram owner, Meta.Credit: Alex Ellinghausen
There is no word from the media group at this stage on how this will affect its journalists.
“We’ve written to the company asking for consultation,” Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance director Michelle Rae said. “MEAA is concerned about a restructure and what that might look like for editorial staff.”
News Corp’s Australasian boss Michael Miller will address the National Press Club next month on the topic of “Australia and global tech: time for a reset”.
He is expected to continue the company’s strident campaign around social media and holding global tech platforms including Meta, owner of Facebook and Instagram, to account.
This week, the company secured a significant deal with ChatGPT’s parent company, OpenAI.
The agreement will let OpenAI use content from more than a dozen of News Corp’s publications for its generative AI products.
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