Jobs to go at SMH and Age in restructure to drive digital push

Nine’s publishing division, which includes this masthead, will make dozens of roles redundant as part of a restructure to sharpen its focus on digital news amid a tough advertising market and rapid technological disruption in the media industry.About 30 voluntary redundancies will be initially offered to staff at The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age as the division pushes for more digital subscribers, with staff in the division’s print operations team and free news site nine.com.au also facing cuts.Nine is announcing job cuts at The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age.Paul RovereManaging director of the publishing division Tory Maguire informed staff of the upcoming changes in an email and town hall meeting on Tuesday morning, saying that the business needed to adapt to a changing media landscape to protect its journalism. This includes investing in new areas to connect with new audiences, she said.“In particular we need to keep shifting towards the digital-first future,” Maguire said, though she added that print revenue has held up better than previously expected.Maguire said the company would engage with the Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance (MEAA) union that represents journalists.Nine signed a landmark deal with Microsoft earlier this month, meaning the tech giant’s AI chatbot Copilot will reference content from the company’s mastheads in its search results, with the media company compensated in return. A briefing from investment bank UBS this month said revenue impact from the Microsoft deal would not have a major impact on the company’s bottom line, suggesting it is worth less than $25 million, but said it was “positive for future potential deals” ahead of expected legislation to bring tech giants to the bargaining table.News organisations around the world are adapting to the rapid uptake of AI chatbots as a tool for consuming information. Google, for example, has rolled out its AI Overview function over the past two years at the top of its search results, leading to a decline in click-through traffic both to news websites and all other web domains.Media union representative Cassie Derrick said the cuts were devastating and called on Nine to give more information about the cuts to the MEAA.“Nine must engage in genuine consultation with staff through their union, and do everything possible to avoid forced redundancies, including redeployment and voluntary options,” Derrick said. “Newsrooms cannot keep absorbing job cuts without consequences for workloads, diversity, quality journalism and the ability of journalists to hold power to account.”The Australian Financial Review will not be affected by the cuts.Publishing was Nine’s second best-performing division in its 2025 full-year results, with revenue of $526 million and earnings, before a common range of deductions, of $153 million. Declines to print sales were offset by subscriber growth, the company said in its annual report last year.Projections show the division’s earnings are expected to be flat in the upcoming 2026 results, delivered in August.The company took $33 million in costs out of the division in the 2025 financial year. Nine has since sold its share of digital real estate business Domain for $1.4 billion, as well as its talkback radio division. It also purchased outdoor media company QMS for $850 million.The Business Briefing newsletter delivers major stories, exclusive coverage and expert opinion. Sign up to get it every weekday morning.From our partners