Telegraph Online Cuts Jobs

The online presence of the Telegraph is making 17 cost cutting redundancies as the advertising downturn continues to take its toll.

The cuts will be made from editorial, production and technical departments leaving the telegraph.co.uk with 70 staff. Managing director of Hollinger Telegraph New Media, Hugo Drayton, explained that the job losses were part of wider cost cutting programme brought about by the worsening economic climate.

He said: “The global slowdown in advertising revenues and the fall-out from the dotcom collapse have led to an extremely difficult year for many online companies. Revenues are not where we expected them to be and at the moment the business is not developing as we had hoped.”

Drayton remained confident that the content of the telegraph.co.uk, which was the first national newspaper to establish an online presence in 1994, would not suffer, but hinted of an increasing move towards paid-for services.

He said: “We were charging for content back in 1995 with our fantasy football league. It costs a lot to put together good subject matter and we are looking at several options to secure additional revenue streams so that we can build a bigger business.”

Commenting on the host of newspapers to extend their reach to the internet in the last few years, he said: “It is not a financially successful move to make. People take it for granted that a newspaper will have an online presence, that it will provide quality content and electronic archives, the problem comes when people expect this service to be free.”

News International recently announced that it was merging thetimes.co.uk and thesundaytimes.co.uk to form a new subscription-based site, Times Newspapers Online (see

Times And Sunday Times Online To Merge

Times And Sunday Times Online To Merge www.telegraph.co.uk

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