‘A blow to quality local journalism’: MEAA blasts ACM’s editorial job cuts

The trade union that represents the media industry has called Australian Community Media’s decision to cut 35 jobs across 11 newsrooms “a blow to quality local journalism”.

On Wednesday, it was revealed the community newspaper network will reportedly open up voluntary redundancies across The Newcastle Herald, Illawarra Mercury, and The Canberra Times.

Managing director Tony Kendall confirmed the redundancies in a town hall meeting on Wednesday, attributing the cuts to the “loss of federal government advertising revenue and the loss of payments from Meta” and “reduced revenue from display and classifieds advertising and print circulation”.