The Guardian announces significant cuts in editorial and commercial teams

The Guardian newspaper has announced plans to make significant cuts in its editorial and commercial teams. The Guardian has said this decision has been taken as a result of the economic shock caused by the coronavirus pandemic. 

The proposals suggested are likely to affect up to as many as 180 jobs. 110 of those job under threat coming from advertising, ‘Guardian Jobs’, marketing roles as well as the ‘Guardian Live’ events department. An additional 70  will come from editorial.

The editor-in-chief of the Guardian Media Group Katharine Viner, and the Guardian Media Group chief executive Annette Thomas have released a joint statement that claims that the COVID-19 pandemic has created an “unsustainable financial outlook for the Guardian”. Its revenues are expected to be down by more than £25m on this year’s budget.

The  Guardian Media Group is the parent company of the Guardian as well as the Observer. It says it is to face “unsustainable annual losses in future years unless we take decisive action”. UNN’s Oliver Down understands that Viner and Thomas remain committed to keeping the Guardian free-to-read and away from paywalls.  

The redundancy strategy remains unclear and a spokesperson for Guardian Media Group has said: “We will discuss all our proposals, including redundancy terms, during collective consultation with our employee and trade union representatives”. 

These redundancies coincide with the Guardian Media Group announced the release of accounts for results for the 2019-20 financial year which ran up to the 12 months to the end of March. The accounts show that before the pandemic the company’s revenues had dipped slightly to £223.5m for the year. The group claim a growth from reader contributions offset a consider fall in advertising income.

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