News Corp is carrying out a major reorganization at its Dow
Jones news publishing unit that will involve substantial job cuts
and shifting of resources into digital media efforts and core
coverage areas.
In a memo to staff on Thursday, Gerard Baker, editor in chief of
Dow Jones and The Wall Street Journal, said the purpose of the
moves was a "full transformation of our newsroom with a bold but
simple aim: to become the premier digital news organization in the
world." He added, "This process will require us to discontinue some
of our activities while investing more in others."
The company will eliminate a few dozen positions Thursday, and
will continue the reductions in coming weeks and months, a person
familiar with the situation said. The eventual cuts could total
well over 100, the person said.
At the same time, Dow Jones plans to beef up hiring in certain
areas such as mobile offerings, interactive graphics and
data-driven journalism. And it will invest in areas that top
executives perceive as core coverage, such as economics and
markets, while scaling back some global operations and other
coverage areas.
As part of the changes, Dow Jones will close bureaus in Prague
and Helsinki and reduce staff in other bureaus in Europe and Asia,
Mr. Baker said in the memo. A Bahasa Indonesia website will be
closed, the small- business coverage group will be eliminated and
several blogs will be shuttered. The company will also scale back
its personal finance team.
The ultimate effect of all the moves on headcount isn't clear.
Dow Jones has already downsized its editorial personnel
considerably in recent years. Five years ago, the company had some
2,100 editorial staffers in the unit that includes the Journal and
Dow Jones Newswires and it currently has about 1,800. Overall, Dow
Jones—which includes the Journal, Dow Jones Newswires, Barron's,
Marketwatch, Factiva, Financial News and a number of professional
business units—has around 5,000 employees in total.
The move by Dow Jones is the latest sign of how traditional news
organizations are racing to transform themselves to seek out growth
in the digital marketplace, while cutting costs to account for
declines in print advertising as readers migrate online.
Late last year, the New York Times eliminated about 100 jobs
through buyouts and layoffs, around 7.5% of the paper's total
staff. It has since continued to hire, with a focus on graphic
artists, video producers and digitally focused staff, and its
overall headcount is currently around 1,300, or roughly where it
was before the cuts, a spokeswoman said. USA Today, the largest
circulating daily newspaper in the U.S., cut 8% of its staff, or
about 70 people, last fall.
In the quarter ended March 31, News Corp reported a steep
decline in net profit and a 1% slip in revenue, largely driven by
unfavorable foreign- exchange fluctuations and lower advertising
revenue at its news and information services unit. Revenue at the
unit, which comprises the newspaper holdings in Britain, Australia
and the U.S., fell 9% in the quarter as advertising revenue dropped
12% and circulation and subscription revenue fell 6%.
At the Journal, ad revenue declined 11% year-on-year in the
quarter, but the company said it expected improvements in the
quarter that ends June 30.
Since the start of 2015, Dow Jones had already laid off close to
100 unionized employees in the U.S. and Canada—almost entirely in
the company's sales divisions—but had hired around 125 new staffers
in their place, for a net gain in employment, according to the
Independent Association of Publisher's Employees union.
Also on Thursday, News Corp announced that it would start paying
out a semiannual dividend for the first time since the company
separated from 21st Century Fox and that it had extended for three
years a shareholder-rights plan, or "poison pill," to fend off any
possible takeover attempts.
Write to Lukas I. Alpert at lukas.alpert@wsj.com
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