UK publisher of Daily Express, Mirror tabloids announces job cuts

[LONDON] The British media group which owns the Daily Express and Daily Mirror tabloids on Monday announced 186 net job cuts across its publications, in what it said was its “biggest” ever shake-up.

“Our new structure represents the biggest reorganisation we’ve ever undertaken, even more than in the early days of the digital revolution,” said the Reach group’s chief content officer David Higgerson.

While 135 jobs would be created focusing on live news and video, 321 posts would be axed, the British news giant told AFP via email.

“The changes we are seeing in the landscape right now demand a wholesale change in how we operate and how we tell stories,” said Higgerson.

“Some jobs will sadly no longer exist, many will change, and around 135 new roles will be created,” he added.

In recent years, the publisher has implemented a series of cost-cutting measures to off-set declining advertising revenues and the slowdown in print media, while assuring that it would continue to invest, particularly in digital ventures.

It cut around 450 posts at the end of 2023, representing 10 per cent of its workforce, after already laying off hundreds of people during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Reach is one of Britain’s biggest news groups and employs over 3,500 people, including 2,300 in editorial roles, according to its latest annual report.

It publishes over 120 titles including a number of local newspapers like the Manchester Evening News and Liverpool Echo.

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The company saw its revenue decline by 5.3 per cent in 2024 to £538.6 million (S$935 million), weighed down mainly by its print newspapers, but its profit more than doubled to £53.6 million thanks to lower costs.

“The scale of today’s announcement... comes as a devastating body blow to staff who have done all that is asked of them and more in the last year to make a success of this business,” said Chris Morley, the Reach coordinator for the National Union of Journalists (NUJ).

“This is extremely discouraging news,” Des Freedman, professor of media and communications at Goldsmiths, University of London told AFP.

Freedman slammed it as an “opportunist move on the part of Reach to cut costs while simultaneously claiming that it wants to enhance its news provision.”

Instead of engaging in what he called an “annual programme of redundancies”, Freedman said the company should be “thinking creatively over how best to incorporate AI” and “retraining journalists” for the shift to video content. AFP