The company plans to cut commercial and editorial posts across the group, including five journalists from the
Observer, six staff from the Guardian Unlimited websites and 24 jobs from its various commercial departments.
The cuts, which will be made in April, are part of a cost cutting scheme implemented across the business after the events of 11 September caused the already unstable economic climate to worsen. A voluntary redundancy and early retirement scheme is already in place at the Guardian, which is expected to reduce its editorial staff by 30 over the next three years.
Managing director of Guardian Newspapers, Carolyn McCall, said: “The severe advertising downturn has seriously affected the company’s revenue. We anticipate that GNL will be £30 million down in advertising against its plan for the current financial year.”
Comment A number of newspaper publishers have been forced to tighten belts as a result of the advertising downturn. Hollinger Telegraph, which runs the Daily Telegraph recently saw heavy losses (see Hollinger Sees Losses Increase As Advertising Revenue Falls); News International, which owns the Sun, News of the World and Times newspapers, admitted that profits would be below expectations due to the events of 11 September (see News Corp Loses £69m Following Attacks) and Pearson has raised the cover price of the Financial Times after announcing that profits at the FT Group for 2001 would be down 40% (see Pearson Warns On Profits Seeing ‘No Material Recovery’ In Ad Market).
National newspapers as a whole saw circulation decline during 2001. However, analysis of last year’s ABC figures shows that the total circulation of the broadsheet market increased year on year for most months of 2001.
