The newspaper owner and TV broadcaster said on Friday that it would axe eliminate 200 jobs, or about four per cent of its nearly 5,000 staff.
Nine chief executive Mike Sneesby told staff in a memo that the business was in a stronger position than any of its rivals but was not immune to economic headwinds impacting many companies globally.
Some of the job losses would come from axing vacant positions and new roles would be found for some whose current positions are being cut, but others would be made redundant.
“It is not something we want to do but it is something we need to do to continue to build on a successful platform of high-quality journalism and digital subscription growth,” he said.
The Australian Financial Review, a Nine publication, reported that between 70 and 90 positions would go its publishing business, which also includes The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age.
Another 38 jobs will be cut from TV news and current affairs, with the remainder from corporate and digital, the AFR reported.
But members of Australia’s journalist union who work at Nine Publishing this afternoon passed a motion of no confidence in Sneesby over the cuts and called for a protected action ballot.
It comes after Seven West Media on Tuesday proposed eliminating up to 150 roles, including journalists from TV and print divisions as well as sales, marketing and print staff.
“While we have controlled costs in recent years and our content is doing well across TV, digital and print, our high cost base of about $1.2 billion a year is not sustainable and needs to be reduced,” chief executive Jeff Howard said in a memo.
“A number of roles across the company will change and unfortunately some people will be leaving us.”
Howard said the need to reduce costs had been created by a number of factors, including the shift from watching linear TV to streaming, the rise of Netflix and Amazon and others, and their launch of ad-funding models.
But Meta deciding not to renew the content deal “certainly has not helped”, he added.
Under pressure from the government, Meta in 2021 signed confidential three-year deals with 13 Australian news companies to compensate them for their content.
Meta has declined to renew the pacts, which were reportedly worth a total of around $70 million a year for the Australian news industry.
In late May, News Corp Australia began its own restructuring, which included an unknown number of job losses.
The MEAA said that the nation’s biggest commercial media organisations must commit to quality journalism rather than look for easy savings by cutting editorial jobs.
The union’s media acting director Michelle Rae acknowledged the job cuts were in part a result of Meta’s decision not to renew deals, but urged Nine, Seven and News Corp to look elsewhere for savings.
“Any cuts to editorial will mean reduced coverage of a range of matters and result in a less informed Australian public,” she said.
“They bring into question how committed Nine, Seven and News Corp are to quality, public interest journalism.
“We will do all we can to support our members during this difficult time and advocate for media organisations to protect journalism by looking for other options to make savings.
“That these cuts are partly the result of Meta walking away from funding deals under the News Media Bargaining Code makes them even harder to swallow.”
Rae said Meta “rakes in billions of dollars off the back of news content produced by Australian journalism” and that its funding deals allowed investment in journalism after years of decline.
“If Meta continues to refuse to negotiate new deals, then it must be designated by the federal government,” she said.
Rae said MEAA members at Nine Publishing were angry that redundancies had been announced during bargaining for a new EBA and that the mastheads had been disproportionately targeted for cuts.
“Nine management has not put a serious offer on the table,” she said.
“With the current agreement expiring on June 30, members will be voting on whether to take protected action at the earliest possible opportunity.”
– with AAP