Pedestrian boss to depart as group slashes staff and titles

The chief executive of Nine-owned Pedestrian Group, Matt Rowley, will leave the youth publisher as part of a major restructure and cost-cutting effort, in which up to 40 jobs will go across the business.

The restructure will include splitting the business in half, and Pedestrian exiting its licensing deals to publish third-party brands including Vice, Refinery29, Gizmodo, Lifehacker and Kotaku in coming months. These titles will no longer be published in Australia, with the majority of their staff to be let go.

It will focus on its wholly owned brands, Pedestrian and Pedestrian TV. The future of its Web3 publication The Chainsaw is up in the air.

With Rowley’s exit, the company is in the market for a new figure to lead the reshaped and downsized division. Rowley announced the changes and his departure to staff on Monday morning. Director of Nine’s free news website, nine.com.au, Kerri Elstub also told staff some roles would be removed as it adjusted its budget.

“We’ve made the tough decision to focus on our wholly owned Pedestrian brands where we control the strategy, the content, the product, the sales and the outcome – the entire business,” Rowley told staff.

In 2015, Nine Entertainment took a majority stake in Pedestrian for $10 million. It bought the remaining 40 per cent of the company in 2018 for $39 million.

Shortly after Nine and Fairfax Media merged in 2018, Pedestrian and Allure Media formed Pedestrian Group and Rowley, who was publishing sales chief, was made chief executive.

In a major redundancy round Nine announced last month, 200 jobs will go across the business, including as many as 90 from Nine’s publishing division. In the news and current affairs television division, 38 jobs will be cut. Radio boss Tom Malone told staff his division would be making no further cuts . Stan, Nine’s subscription streaming service, will not see any cuts.