Global Mail restructures Australian team and axes overseas journalists
Privately-funded online news site The Global Mail has made its overseas correspondents redundant and axed staff in its Australian office, according to reports.
A story in The Australian claims a source said the company had let four local staff go on Friday.
The overseas correspondents, based in New York, the Middle East and Latin America, were informed three weeks ago their roles would cease to exist according to the Middle East correspondent Jess Hill, who announced her redundancy on Twitter today.
The Global Mail has no readers and soon no journalists? The journalists who write about The Global Mail must be the only people that know it exists.
The Global Mail has had some excellent stories on it which have been well read. But the site has been let down by poor design and some dull editing. Too much ‘worthy’ and not enough ‘news’. Given the quality of reporters contributing to it should be a must read. But it looked dull when it started and it looks duller after the redesign.
The Global Mail is very dull and will get much duller after this round of sackings. No one under 40 works there now which is a very bad look for an online publication. They have got no hope of surviving after the money runs out. They seem to be clueless about how the internet works.
Don’t know about it needing more youth. might be that it needs more journo’s over 40 who know how to pick up a phone or knock on a door instead of fawning over twitter and facebook all day..
bill
Thanks for clearing that up Gabrielle. The Global Mail is/was a ‘serious journalistic mouthpiece’. So, clearly anyone over 40 wouldn’t qualify because they are “clueless about how the Internet works”.
Hang on, wouldn’t that exclude luminaries like Vint Cerf, Eric Schmidt, Tim Bereners-Lee, Tim Cook … yep the lot of them are clueless. Their CVs and achievements regarding “how the Internet works” must pale into comparison to yours.
Wait,
so a “new media” startup headed and written primarily by MSM/ Old Media folks is failing. Who would have guessed? 🙂
When they want someone who has actually founded and worked for successful sites, I’m available 🙂
I’m with Duncan – any young experienced online editor or journo could turn TGM around in a short time. The dinosaurs working there now are just throwing good money after bad.
@ Duncan Riley … hmmm, so you’re the “editor” of a giveaway site which features free rubber gloves and shampoo samples. Now that’s just what the poor old Global Mail needs to score more eyeballs. The problem with the Global Mail is that there are only so many long and worthy stories about poverty in some far off country that one can read – just as there are only so many short fluff pieces about Taylor Swift’s boyfriend of the moment that anyone with a functioning brain can endure. As always, it comes down to a balance, light and shade,with the light being written with a sense of fun – and a little irony for a grown-up audience maybe? – and the shade not laying on the doom and gloom like a layer of wet cement. No, Duncan, it’s got nothing to do with young or old – but, hey, at least I looked at your site, for about as long as I’d spend on a Taylor Swift’s boyfriend story.
@ Duncan
Your disappointing WordPress site medacity.com seems to be doing a lot worse than the dinosaurs at Global Mail.
You haven’t posted since 18 October – has there been no new media or tech news since then?
@zumabeach
I target verticals I know nothing about to learn them…simply my latest project…which is already paying my rent and some more.
Do some history and you’ll see that not only did I write for TechCrunch for a year that I also co-founded a publishing startup (b5media) that did $20m USD in VC funding, and that the last site I cashed out of went for $330k US…oh, and that was just for sport 😉
But hey, you’ve done about enough homework on new media as the folks running the Global Mail 😉
Anonymous
I start multiple sites and get try to get them to stick in various verticals… certainly set me up well in the past and it continues to work. Get over it 🙂
Duncan time to stop trading off your one year at techcrunch.
Secondly, raising 20m is not an achievement. That’s like congratulating someone on a bank loan.
The Global Mail hasn’t bothered advertising important recent positions, a large number of the staff are in relationships with each other and have given jobs to family connections/previous colleagues. They may be able to get away with it now, because it’s not a commercial endeavour and they have the luxury of being able to under perform for a while, but they should take a long hard look at themselves.
@Duncan
You’re good with the smileys, I’ll give you that.