The chief executive of Nine-owned Pedestrian Group, Matt Rowley, will leave the youth publisher as part of a major restructure and cost-cutting effort, in which up to 40 jobs will go across the business.
The restructure will include splitting the business in half, and Pedestrian exiting its licensing deals to publish third-party brands including Vice, Refinery29, Gizmodo, Lifehacker and Kotaku in coming months. These titles will no longer be published in Australia, with the majority of their staff to be let go.
It will focus on its wholly owned brands, Pedestrian and Pedestrian TV. The future of its Web3 publication The Chainsaw is up in the air.
Pedestrian Group CEO Matt Rowley is leaving the publisher as part of a restructure.
With Rowley’s exit, the company is in the market for a new figure to lead the reshaped and downsized division. Rowley announced the changes and his departure to staff on Monday morning. Director of Nine’s free news website, nine.com.au, Kerri Elstub also told staff some roles would be removed as it adjusted its budget.
In 2015, Nine Entertainment took a majority stake in Pedestrian for $10 million. It bought the remaining 40 per cent of the company in 2018 for $39 million.
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Shortly after Nine and Fairfax Media merged in 2019, Pedestrian and Allure Media formed Pedestrian Group and Rowley, who was publishing sales chief, was made chief executive.
In a major redundancy round Nine announced last month, 200 jobs will go across the business, including as many as 90 from Nine’s publishing division. In the news and current affairs television division, 38 jobs will be cut. Radio boss Tom Malone told staff his division would be making no further cuts after a year of cost realignments. Stan, Nine’s subscription streaming service, will not see any cuts.
Senior figures at Nine said between 25 and 40 jobs would go from Pedestrian Group, which employs about 95 staff. It will try to redeploy some of those affected. These cuts will be on top of the 90 jobs coming out of the publishing division.