The Guardian to cut 180 jobs
The Guardian is to cut 180 jobs including 70 in editorial despite drawing on the Government's job retention scheme.
The publisher warned that pressures on advertising, its recruitment website, live events and print circulation have created "an unsustainable financial outlook".
The coronavirus pandemic has put The Guardian on course for a revenue shortfall of "well over" £25m, it said.
In an internal memo, editor Katharine Viner and chief executive Annette Thomas, who only joined in March, said the cost-cutting was required despite an earlier decision to furlough 100 staff. Marketing and travel budgets have also been reduced.
"Even after taking these measures into account though, we face unsustainable annual losses in future years unless we take decisive action," they said.
"It is clear that we will need to make significant cost savings, and change the way we work."
Ms Viner said last month that The Guardian had drawn on taxpayer money to save jobs.
"That’s what the furlough scheme is for, it’s to keep people employed so I think it’s reasonable to follow it," she said at the time.
Meanwhile, BBC News will cut another 70 jobs on top of the 450 announced earlier this year due to the increased financial pressure on the BBC from the pandemic.
The Guardian job cuts represent more than one in 10 staff and come after a three-year turnaround plan was declared complete last year when The Guardian broke even for the first time in two decades, according to a non-standard accounting measure.
That milestone was reached after hundreds of voluntary redundancies, a retreat from an ambitious international expansion and the decision to scrap bespoke presses and outsource printing in a standard tabloid format.
Guardian Media Group's results for the year to March, also published on Wednesday, showed flat turnover of £224m but growing operating losses. Losses on the ebitda measure before exceptional items more than doubled to £9.3m. Cash burn, adjusted for one-offs, rose slightly to £29m.
On the commercial side, the company signalled a greater focus on digital subscriptions and donations, in line with an industry-wide shift away from volatile advertising markets that are increasingly dominated by Facebook and Google.
The Guardian and its Sunday stablemate The Observer are owned by the Scott Trust, an endowment that has been topped up with hundreds of millions of pounds in recent years by the sale of stakes in Auto Trader and the events operator now known as Ascential.
The publisher aims to keep its cash burn within a return of roughly 3pc on Scott Trust investments. However, last year the endowment declined in value by 6pc to £954m.
The latest round of job cuts are subject to consultation with staff and unions. The Guardian did not say whether compulsory redundancies, which have previously been avoided in its newsroom, will be part of the process.
Mirror and Express owner Reach announced earlier this month that it would be retrenching staff as coronavirus continues to affect the UK employment landscape.
In total major firms have announced 118,706 job cuts in the UK since the onset of the pandemic – a figure which does not include a number of companies that have warned of redundancies but have yet to put a figure on them.
The hefty numbers show the challenge facing the Government as it tries to avoid mass unemployment while winding down the UK's £19.6bn furlough scheme, which ends in October.
