Reach is to cut 200 roles in a £30m cost-cutting drive after advertisers failed to spend heavily through the World Cup, Black Friday and Christmas season.
The newspaper group, which currently employs around 4,000 permanent staff, owns hundreds of regional titles including the Manchester Evening News and Liverpool Echo as well as a nationwide portfolio of Live-branded websites and nationals including the Daily Mirror and Express.
It reported a slump of 20.2 per cent in print advertising and 5.9 per cent in digital ads in the traditionally strong fourth quarter.
CEO Jim Mullen said that on top of the poor advertising income, the cost of newsprint had soared by 60 per cent over the last year and the business also had about £70m to pay annually in pension deficit obligations and historical legal issues relating to allegations of phone hacking.
The publisher, which recently settled a long-running pay dispute with staff, saw shares in plunge by over 20 per cent on the news, as well as a separate warning that it would miss its anticipated annual profits of £112.8m by what it described as a “mid-single-digit” per cent.
The cuts will affect approximately 100 editorial roles, while Reach also stated it would withdraw over 100 existing vacancies. Staff were informed of the news in an internal email which read: ““Under the proposals we’re announcing today we anticipate that, regrettably, around 200 roles of current employees will be made redundant.”
Responding to the news, Reach NUJ national coordinator Chris Morley said: “Reach’s announcement of big job cuts – on top of the shedding of journalists’ roles around the group over the last few months of 2022 – has come as a grim and unwelcome start to the new year.
“We are today urgently seeking more clarity on these proposals and where the company thinks it can make cuts without harming its core business.
“Our members are clear that for the company to succeed, it must protect the creation of quality journalism and original content and that means limiting as much as possible any cuts to editorial staffing.”
