Pedestrian CEO exits as Nine announces more publishing staff changes
Pedestrian has announced the “tough decision” to transition out of its current brand licences, resulting in a number of job losses.
Pedestrian CEO Matt Rowley announced that “as a result of this change, I will also be leaving Pedestrian Group and Nine following a transition period” in a note to staff seen by Mumbrella.
Refinery29 Australia staff among ‘dozens’ of Pedestrian employees made redundant
“The process to appoint a new CEO is currently underway and will be announced to the team in due course,” Rowley wrote.
“I have loved my time at Pedestrian Group – it has been a privilege working with you all.”
Pedestrian will focus on the wholly-owned brands “where we control the strategy, the content, the product, the sales and the outcome – the entire business”, and will “transition out of our current brand licences, which will reposition our business for the future”.
“This will have an impact on roles within the group and I appreciate the uncertainty this change creates, so we will be in contact immediately with those people.
RELATED: Nine journalists moving to strike ahead of job cuts and Olympics
“Where possible, we will look for opportunities for redeployment and will continue to work with everyone over the coming days to support this difficult transition.”
Rowley said the process to appoint a new CEO is currently underway and “will be announced to the team in due course.”
In addition to this, director of nine.com.au, Kerri Elstub, has announced that it won’t be replacing “a small number of existing vacant roles in the team”, in the video and news teams.
While she didn’t announce any further job cuts, Elstub wrote: “We may need to review our structure to ensure we can continue to deliver our award winning breaking news service and our exclusive digital Olympics coverage, while meeting our commercial and audience budgets.”
This comes as Nine journalists are moving closer to a strike after pay talks were met with a paltry increase, and the publishing division remains the target of up to 90 job cuts.
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Nathan Jolly is the Features Editor at Mumbrella. He joined the team in July, 2023.
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What on earth is happening at Nine?
Matt Rowley is one of the good ones!
One of the best leaders who I have ever had the pleasure to work with and given how bad leadership is a hot topic at the moment, one would think that keeping a gent like him would be a priority for Nine.
All the best Matt!
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Seven, Nine, and now Pedestrian Group. F*** this media apocalypse. We’re poorer as audiences without a decent Fourth Estate.
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Pedestrian was a vanity acquisition for Marks and Alexi. Matt did a good job running it as an outlier and found a market fit for the old Allure assets (another set of good assets beyond the strategic capabilities of the Nine gang).
Same story for Caradvice. Decent sticker price, poorly managed and now doesn’t exist. Founders who cashed out now building the same product elsewhere. Same decision makers who drove these failures have moved up in the Nine world.
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This is the most visible sign of the mismanagement at Nine to date. Do they need to turn off all the lights before someone wakes up and sees management (Sneesby, Parsons) asleep at the wheel.
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Ask friendlyjordies and his young fan base what what they think of Pedestrian, it’s way overvalued, better just dump the brand before it’s worthless.
Corporate advertising masquerading as “journalism” has no weight anymore.
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