Australian media giant Nine Publishing has confirmed another wave of staff redundancies, as the company accelerates its strategic transition away from legacy print operations toward a digital-first media model. The new cuts come as part of a broader organizational and operational overhaul that has been unfolding across the company’s news and publishing division throughout 2024.
In an internal email sent to all publishing staff on Tuesday morning, Nine Publishing executive Tory Maguire notified employees of an urgent town hall meeting to outline the details of the upcoming structural changes. Maguire framed the restructuring as a necessary adaptation to a rapidly shifting global media ecosystem, arguing that organizational change was critical to protecting the company’s core commitment to high-quality journalism.
“ The best way to protect our quality journalism is to ensure our organisation adapts to a changing media landscape, that we’re growing commercially and investing in new areas which connect with new audiences. In particular we need to keep shifting towards the digital-first future,” Maguire wrote in the staff memo. “Therefore, we are constantly reviewing our business to ensure it is fit for purpose in our changing environment. As a result we are going to be making some changes to our structure and how we operate.”
This latest round of redundancies builds on a previous round of cuts announced back in April, when Nine’s parent company carried out the first sweep of layoffs that eliminated 20 roles across the firm’s news and current affairs division. At that time, leadership framed the restructuring as tied to the rollout of the company’s flagship Future News project, an initiative designed to upgrade the network’s technology infrastructure, staff training, and production equipment while streamlining workflows and pushing for more multiskilled roles across the newsroom.
Nine’s executive director of news and current affairs Fiona Dear described the Future News project in April as the largest single investment in the company’s news and current affairs division in decades. She noted that new digital tools, integrated systems, and updated production workflows were set to completely transform how the organization creates and distributes news content.
“We’ve said from the beginning that this will touch all roles in some way, shape or form,” Dear said in April. “This isn’t about doing the same work with fewer people to save money; it’s about acknowledging that the work itself is changing across our industry and we must adapt to survive and thrive.”
As of Tuesday, company leadership has not released the exact number of roles set to be eliminated in this latest restructuring round, with additional details expected to be released following the staff town hall. The restructuring reflects a broader industry-wide trend among legacy media companies across Australia and globally, as organizations grapple with declining print advertising revenue and shifting audience consumption habits that favor digital and mobile news content.