‘Hunger Games’ with Lachlan Murdoch, Rebekah Brooks in town as News plans shake-up
By Stephen Brook and Colin Kruger
News Corp’s top executives, including UK boss Rebekah Brooks and chief executive Robert Thomson, are in Sydney as part of the media giant’s global budget meetings this week, amid plans for a massive shake-up of the group’s news operation in Australia.
“Budget meetings this year are in Australia,” said a global News Corp source, who is not authorised to speak publicly about such sensitive matters. Some of the top editors from the group’s British newspapers have accompanied Brooks.
News Corp’s UK boss, Rebekah Brooks, is in Australia as the company plans a restructure of its Australian business. Credit: AFP
But it is the budget of the underperforming Australian operation that is expected to come under particular scrutiny from Thomson, News Corp chair Lachlan Murdoch and local boss Michael Miller.
On Tuesday, top editors including the Herald Sun’s Sam Weir, the Adelaide Advertiser’s Gemma Jones and national executive editor Peter Blunden gathered in Sydney for meetings and presentations about restructuring, including presentations on how best to cater to audience segments.
The restructure of News Corp Australia’s newspaper division is in part a response to market conditions, with a weaker advertising market and the end of the company’s commercial deal with Meta – estimated at $15 million a year.
Cost-cutting this financial year is expected to be as high as $15 million, with another $50 million in cuts expected next year, according to reports.
The bulk of the changes are set to affect the daily metropolitan papers, which include Sydney’s Daily Telegraph, Melbourne’s Herald Sun, Brisbane’s Courier Mail and the Adelaide Advertiser.
One plan is for fewer editors at masthead level as well as fewer managing director and general manager roles at various mastheads. Weekend print editors could be vulnerable in favour of a seven-day-a-week operation.
Reporting lines will change, but there is “a lot of unfinished business as to who, what and where”, one executive said.
Another editorial source said the feeling among staff was: “A bomb is about to go off and people are just waiting to see who cops a direct hit.”
News Corp global chief executive Robert Thomson is in town.Credit: AP
The metro papers are set to form one silo standing alongside the free content, including news.com.au and a premium division of The Australian and luxury magazines including Vogue and Wish.
Weeks of, at times, hostile negotiations between editors and executives preceded the current meetings, along with an edict for journalists at News Corp headquarters in Sydney’s Holt Street to tidy their desks. Cleaners also cleaned up desks abandoned after rounds of previous redundancies.
“It’s Hunger Games on level five Holt Street,” said a local News Corp source, referring to the management floor.
Even well-established freelancers report that work is drying up. “They’re knocking back ideas which they seem to think are good, because of budgetary constraints,” one senior freelancer said.
A greater role is expected for the national desk, run by Blunden, a former Herald Sun editor, who will have more reporters in his group.
The national desk already contains foreign correspondents, the network of specialist senior reporters, some sports reporters, the business feed from The Australian, NCA Newswire – which replaced AAP – and real estate coverage.
An announcement, including a more comprehensive transition to digital, is expected as soon as next week. News Corp declined to comment.
The plan would bring in changes first proposed by the former head of News’ operations in Australia, Kim Williams, now chair of the ABC. He tried to integrate the local group into a more efficient news operation more than a decade ago but lost a power struggle with editors and resigned in 2013.
“Unfortunately, Kim Williams was right,” one insider said.
News has had recent wins in its battle to receive fees from digital platforms. It agreed to a new commercial deal with Google this year, and on Thursday it announced a deal with ChatGPT’s parent company, OpenAI.
Thomson announced that the deal would let OpenAI use content from more than a dozen of News Corp’s publications for its generative AI products.
“We believe a historic agreement will set new standards for veracity, for virtue and for value in the digital age,” Thomson said.
Weeks of, at times, hostile negotiations between editors and executives preceded the current meetings.Credit: Rhett Wyman
The pact could be worth more than $US250 million ($378 million) over five years, according to a report about the deal in The Wall Street Journal, itself part of the News Corp stable, which cited people familiar with the matter.
“We view this positively for News Corp and for the broader media industry, with the first AI content deal being signed ... We are watchful on further deals across the sector over coming months,” said UBS analyst Lucy Huang.
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