
Rupert Murdoch’s News group has closely followed Aussie rival Fairfax in taking a hatchet to its newsroom and photography staff.
The changes will include cutting a so-far unspecified number of photographers’ jobs to move to a “hybrid model” of full-time specialists supported by freelancers and news agencies, News Ltd staff were told at meetings yesterday.
News’s editorial management director Campbell Reid said the changes were needed as part of a new approach to “long-standing newsroom processes”. “Like every other business today, we have to identify opportunities to improve and modernise the way we work to become more efficient,” Reid said in a media statement.
No estimate of the likely savings was given, however. The Fairfax group, which publishes the Sydney Morning Herald, Australian Financial Review and the Melbourne Age, last week said it expected to save $30 million a year from its cutbacks.