News Corp to close commercial operations at Storyful APAC
News Corp has made the decision to close Storyful’s commercial operations in Australia and Pacific, with this week its final in operation. Mumbrella understands the closure will impact the sales, creative and intel teams, but the seven-person editorial team will continue to operate in the region.
In January, the social media and content intelligence agency appointed two new staffers to its editorial team after moving its Hong Kong operations to Sydney just over a year ago in a restructure. The business still has teams in New York, Los Angeles, Dublin and London which are unaffected by the closure.
In a post on LinkedIn, Storyful’s executive director of customer intelligence, Asha Oberoi, announced the closure of the business, saying it was one made with ‘careful consideration’. Oberoi joined the business in August 2019 from Isentia.
“After careful consideration, it had been decided that this will be Storyful’s last week of commercial operations in Australia,” Oberoi said.
“Today I wanted to say a big thank you to my Storyful colleagues in Sydney for being wonderful team mates. I have learnt so much from you all. A big thank you also to my Storyful colleagues around the world who will continue the awesome investigative and intelligence work that Storyful has built such a great reputation doing.”
In January, the editorial side of the APAC business was still focused on growth, with New York-based editor-in-chief Darren Davidson saying Stephanie Hunt, who was appointed senior editor, would ‘be vital to our growth plans in Australia and all of APAC’.
Davidson took on the role in 2018, five years after News Corp acquired the Irish-founded Storyful for €18 million. The business employees around 200 people globally and credits itself as being the ‘first social media newswire’.
Globally, Storyful still operates under the News Corp banner and as such the News Corp Australia teams will still have access to its products.
That’s really sad.
NewsCorp is an absolute dogs breakfast of a company, but Storytful were by far one of the most interesting sub units, manned by some fantastic people.
Good luck to all those affected.
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A lot of nice people I know will be leaving Storyful. Sad days and good luck to them all.
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