Redundancies at News Limited as publisher moves away from ‘sub hubs’
News Limited has announced more than 60 redundancies as the company moves away from so-called ‘sub hubs’ in favour of a combined platform for print and web publishing.
While staff were informed of the broad changes before Christmas, managers will today confirm to individual sub editors, employed at the company’s ‘sub hub’ NewsCentral, whether they themselves will be made redundant or redeployed.
The company says the changes are the result of its long planned shift to its new publishing system Edios Methode.
“These changes, which are part of the ongoing transformation of News Limited, were announced to staff before Christmas,” said a News Limited spokesman.
“They come about as we prepare to transition to real-time, multi-platform publishing by fully utilising the capability of our $60m Eidos Méthode system,” he said.
“The simplified content production workflow that Méthode enables will bring real-time publishing decisions into the heart of our newsrooms.”
As Crikey reported last week the announcement is a move away from the centralisation of subbing at News Limited that began in 2009.
The changes will see a number of roles re-deployed to various metropolitan newsrooms.
In making the change the company announced the creation of the new role of news producers a role which the company says will combine: “the knowledge and skills of our best print sub-editors and our best digital content producers.”
The Australian reports today of the 64.8 full time equivalent positions made redundant there have been more than 40 volunteers, with another 22 to be forced redundancies.
The move comes as News Limited’s biggest rival Fairfax media continues to move towards further centralisation of subbing, with Financial Review Group jobs the latest to be shifted to New Zealand.
Nic Christensen
Interesting. News is rolling out Methode while Fairfax appears to have undone it at the Fin. Makes the Williams strategy look more and more like a solid content plan with single desk production while Fairfax succumb to the consulting disease.
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It is interesting that Fairfax and News are taking such different approaches. Fairfax seems to have ditched print altogether and is looking like it has adopted the values of smh.com.au. News on the other hand seems to trying to build a business around editorial (where they have always been the laggard in reality).
If Fairfax loses (or has lost) the AB demographic, can News win it? Robert Thomson is a guy who could well achieve on that.
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@Geek. The Guardian will grab a piece of it for sure!
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@reader: nice thought. But the guardian is talking about 3 oz journos. Which means more commentators rsther than news reporting.
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