Fairfax Media, Australia’s second largest newspaper publisher, plans to cut 22 per cent of its workforce, close printing sites and introduce digital subscriptions to halt sliding sales and a stock price slump.
The Sydney Morning Herald, bought by Fairfax in 1841, and its Melbourne sister the Age, will shrink to tabloid size by March next year, the company said in a statement yesterday. Fairfax will start charging the publications’ online readers in the first quarter of next year and may end print editions entirely if revenue declines materially, it said.
Fairfax shares jumped the most in more than four months after chief executive Greg Hywood deepened cost cuts and announced 1,900 job losses. The publisher’s biggest shareholder and Australia’s richest woman, Gina Rinehart, is pushing the company to address an 85 per cent stock price decline since 2007 and falling newspaper circulation after a record loss in 2011.
Mr Hywood raised his annual savings target to A$235 million by 2015 from a previous estimate of A$170 million and said two printing plants would close by June 2014. – (Bloomberg)
