More executives let go in News Corp restructure
The biggest restructuring in News Corp Australia’s history continues to roll on, as several senior executives have been moved on.
Following the unceremonious dumping of news.com.au’s editor-in-chief Lisa Muxworthy — who made the website the most-clicked news publication in the country after it lost ground during Covid to the ABC — and Editorial Innovation Centre director John McGourty, the company has now removed Michael Wilkins, managing director of the company’s national sport brands.
Marcus Hooke, general manager of print production is also out, according to an AFR report this week that quotes “sources inside the company,” along with a number of managers from various sales teams.
News Corp Australia confirmed to Mumbrella it will not be making a public announcement regarding these staff redundancies.
Peter Blunden, News Corp Australia’s former national executive editor, and one of Rupert Murdoch’s many right-hand-men over the year, will step back to three days a week, although he will maintain his board position.
Executive chairman Michael Miller confirmed last week in a staff email that “a number of roles will change and some impacted people will regrettably leave our business”.
“As we are now living at a time when the way news and information is created and consumed is changing faster than it has ever changed, we too must continue to evolve,” he said of the cuts.
More redundancies are expected in the next week; Miller promised staff last week that by June 12 they would receive “more information” on “what these changes mean for you and how teams will operate”, adding: “We will try to minimise these impacts as much as possible and will treat our affected colleagues with the utmost of respect.”
Mumbrella has contacted News Corp for comment.
Subscribe to the daily newsletter
Got a tip?
Nathan Jolly is the Deputy Editor of Mumbrella. He joined the team in July, 2023.
Linkedin
These AI deals that publishers like News Corp are doing have nothing to do with using AI to generate content. It is because existing AI platforms like ChatGPT are already using News Corp journalism content to train their AI, without compensating News Corp at all for that, which in some views is copyright infringement. The New York Times is suing ChatGPT creator OpenAI, but other media companies like DotDash Meredith and News Corp are choosing to instead enter into what is essentially a licensing deal where OpenAI pays News Corp millions for the use of their content, which gives the best of both worlds.
User ID not verified.
I had close to 20 years in at News and signed off a few years back. When News was plump and had coin (display plus the rivers of gold), little justification was required to get commercial and editorial resources. From my experiences, despite some flaws of the era, it was as a whole very good to its people. When there were signs that world was changing, News as an Australian giant was arrogantly slow to respond to the emerging revenue cannibals in the classified space occasionally trying to counter through online plays and acquisitions that it would then crush, consistently floundering and failing. Even as revenues fell, it maintained an executive heavy, patriarchal, multi divisional multi tiered structure for way too long (Murdoch senior saw the internal competition as a strength and no one would argue), unfortunately at the expensive of commercial and editorial doers and critically the thinkers and innovators. It flicked Williams (not everyones favourite but at least an innovator) and brought back as he oft called himself ‘the last of the flat earthers’ the honorable Mr Clarke to calm the farm. The window for transformation was missed – alas a dead horse.
User ID not verified.
So Lachlan flies over on his $90m private jet to sack a bunch of people to save $67m.
Peak Murdoch.
User ID not verified.
I didnt see that coming?
User ID not verified.
According to their recent AI press release, journos / staff writers will be the next on the chopping block..
User ID not verified.
To be fair, that wouldn’t cover his head hours in the meeting, the $67m.
User ID not verified.
Just made the comment re 20 years, Williams, the last of the flat earthers….
User ID not verified.
The deal specifically stated that in return for supplying content to OpenAI, News will have access to the AI tools to “enhance their journalistic offering”.
Claiming otherwise is a misunderstanding of the situation, or a blatant lie.
User ID not verified.
Those redundancies will cost them a bomb, those folk have been at News a long time!
User ID not verified.
Have your say