The COVID-19 crisis in journalism is making inroads into the businesses of some of the biggest and most secure titles in the global media.
Names such as The Economist, Conde Nast and the Financial Times have been announcing job cuts and pay freezes, and smaller digital players have joined BuzzFeed with cuts of their own — Quartz and Vice both cut jobs last week.
All up nearly 400 jobs were lost just last week, and a 100 or more sent on leave, possibly never to return if business conditions don’t improve quickly. Hundreds of managers had bonuses and pay cut amid warnings of multi-million dollar revenue gaps.
There have been no job losses at the Financial Times which revealed its second round of cuts in a month last week with CEO, John Ridding revealing in a staff memo that it was cutting spending on non-staff contributors and making further reductions to pay and working hours.
All non-editorial staff on the FT earning £50,000 or more a year will lose 10% or more in both working hours and salary from July 1 until the end of the year “at the latest”, according to the memo.
Ridding said the FT had gained 50,000 new digital subscribers in the past two months, with high levels of website engagement. Its newspapers had a daily readership of 1.1 million people, he said. With daily sales of just over 146,300 in March (down 16% in the past year), the FT has around 950,000 digital subs.
In its April statement the paper revealed that the Japanese owner Nikkei had agreed to guarantee all jobs at the FT this year, but cuts and other savings had to be made.
Ridding told staff in April that “even if economic activity rebounds later in the year, we still face a revenue gap that stretches into double-digit millions and which we need to manage”. That’s a story every media company — legacy and digital — is now sharing.
The big shock though was at The Economist where 90 non-journalist staff will lose their jobs. That’s 7% of its 1300 staff, and the first job cuts in the top tier of global English-language print media (The FT, Economist, New York Times, Washington Post, The Times and Sunday Times and the Wall Street Journal).
The other top-tier papers have all reportedly introduced cost controls, accelerated staff holidays, shorter working weeks, and bonus and executive pay cuts.
Life has been made tougher for The Economist by its system of central publishing. As airlines have slashed services (especially Singapore Air and Qantas), its distribution has been disrupted. For example, it prints in Singapore and flies print copies each Friday into other Asian capitals as well as Sydney and Auckland. That has also impacted the delivery of subscriptions as well in these markets.
The Economist’s cuts were made across events, its client solutions business and the marketing communications agency TVC, with no cuts made to editorial. Executives took voluntary pay cuts. Its bimonthly print lifestyle magazine 1843 will go digital-only beginning with the August/September issue. That move was planned before the eruption of the pandemic because it was not performing.
Vice cut 55 US staff and 100 outside the US just days after BuzzFeed News closed its UK and Australian newsrooms with the loss of more than 20 jobs.
Quartz slashed its staff by nearly 50% by getting rid of 88 jobs on Friday.
Conde Nast (which owns The New Yorker, Vanity Fair, Vogue and Wired) revealed a second round of cuts last week, sacking 100 staff and sending another 100 on enforced leave. In April Conde Nast revealed wholesale pay cuts and job hiring freezes across all of the group.
The future of the New York Daily News is up in the air with its owner Tribune Publishing expected to report a big loss this Friday. Tribune Publishing also owns the Chicago Tribune and the Baltimore Sun, among other publications. Last week Tribune Publishing and the main journalists’ union agreed to send all unionised Chicago Tribune newsroom employees on holidays to save more than US$40,000 over three weeks.
Maybe if the media and its servile grovelling journos catered for everybody and not just the redneck fringe more people might buy/read/watch and advertise with them, when you only cater for the lunatic neo cons you turn the intelligent ones off. personally they’re not getting sacked fast enough to please me, maybe a few years on newstarve might change their allegiances and wake them up to what their brainwashing of voters has done to a once decent society.
What good ideas, bb! Don’t hold your breath though…could be a long wait!!
If you think The Economist, The New Yorker, Vanity Fair, Vice, and Buzzfeed produce material for rednecks or “the lunatic neo cons” braddybear, you clearly have never read them.
I’ve not been subjected to Vice & Buzzfeed but, as a reader of the NYer for decades and the Economist too often, “lunatic neolibs” is perfectly apt for the others.
Not to mention over entitled wastes of space who’ve never broken a sweat earning their daily caviar, much less had a callous on their soft palms.
Agree fully.
So… how is Crikey fairing? Just asking…
How about a frank discussion about how much a working journalist needs to be paid, Crikey? This is of fundamental importance to a rapidly disrupting industry, in which a small number of senior and/or very high profile journalists, are still paid unsustainable amounts, while hands-on trade staff down the chain are laid off, cut from tenure, put on withering freelance rates, or lost for good from the vocation along with entire mastheads. This even obtains at the ABC. Maybe especially.
In journalism, who earns what, and for doing what, and how is it justified, and who else might be employed, and to do what, if they weren’t There’s an awful lot of wailing and gnashing of teeth about the decline of the sector from the Baby Boomer generation, who lived through journalism’s most lucrative years. But not much trickling down of the dwindling resources that do remain, it seems, to the next generation.
How about a frank discussion about how much a working journalist needs to be paid, Crikey? This is of fundamental importance to a rapidly disrupting industry, in which a small number of senior and/or very high profile journalists, are still paid unsustainable amounts, while hands-on trade staff down the chain are laid off, cut from tenure, put on withering freelance rates, or lost for good from the vocation along with entire mastheads. This even obtains at the ABC. Maybe especially.
In journalism, who earns what, and for doing what, and how is it justified, and who else might be employed, and to do what, if they weren’t There’s an awful lot of wailing and gnashing of teeth about the decline of the sector from the Baby Boomer generation, who lived through journalism’s most lucrative years. But not much trickling down of the dwindling resources that do remain, it seems, to the next generation.
As a near 20 year subscriber to the Economist, I cancelled my subs about 6 months ago. The venerable paper was playing all the subs games of less self-important rags. While it was easy to tick the ‘Automatic Subscription’ box some years ago and have $500 taken from my credit card each year, it was impossible to UNTICK it online. I had to email Singapore to get the Auto unticked and get a confirmation email back.
I had complained of late deliveries in Australia – sometimes it was in the Newsagent before my weekly arrived. After a couple of emails my service dramatically improved. It turned out that there were two levels of delivery service in Australia – one for the mass, and one for those who complain. I was upgraded while the mugs put up with the B team for the same $500 per year.
But my main reason for exiting the Economist was declining lack of balanced reporting and its capture by the soft Left influences. This culminated in the editorial backing of the Liberal Democrats in the UK election – YES the party which was wiped out and whose leader lost her seat!
We see how well the Economist backed EU has worked in the COVID crisis where the great solidarity of the member countries dissolved into rapid closing of nation state borders, and the likes of well performing Germany telling badly afflicted Italy to get f**ked.