Guardian to axe 180 jobs as revenue plunges
The Guardian has announced plans to cut 180 jobs in both its editorial and commercial departments, after revenue plunged more than £25m during the coronavirus crisis.
The newspaper group said the job cuts will mostly affect its advertising, Guardian Jobs, marketing and Guardian Live departments, with 70 additional redundancies in its editorial unit. The job cuts will reduce the Guardian’s overall workforce by 12 per cent.
Editor-in-chief Katharine Viner and the Guardian Media Group (GMG) chief executive Annette Thomas said in a joint statement to staff that the pandemic had created an “unsustainable financial outlook for the Guardian” with revenues expected to slump more than £25m over the year.
They added that GMG, the parent company of the Guardian and its Sunday paper the Observer, was facing “unsustainable annual losses in future years unless we take decisive action” to reduce costs.
The Guardian said it will not make changes to its free-to-read model by introducing a paywall service used by many of its rivals. Viner and Thomas said the group will instead concentrate on the Guardian’s online growth, and refocus its revenue model.
“Despite the pressures that coronavirus has placed on our business, our unique reader relationship model has proved successful, and the strategy of the past few years has been the right one,” they said.
The announcements came as GMG released its annual results for the 12 months to 29 March.
Group revenue remained mostly flat before the pandemic dipping slightly from £224.5m last year to £223.5m in 2020.
GMG said strong growth in reader revenues was offset by steep declines in advertising revenues and ongoing structural declines in its newsstand.
Group earnings before tax, depreciation and amortisation (Ebitda) plummeted from a £3.7m loss last year to losses of £9.3m in the 12 months to March.
GMG reported an overall loss of £36.8m for the year, with finances expected to take a further hit in the wake of the pandemic.