The publisher of the Mirror, Express and Star newspapers has put 600 jobs at risk in its latest restructure to adapt to changing reader habits and the impact of artificial intelligence.
Reach, which also owns scores of regional titles including the Manchester Evening News, the Birmingham Mail and the Liverpool Echo, said on Monday that it intends to make 321 editorial redundancies.
The overall number of jobs at risk is separate to a restructure of its commercial and production operations, as well as roles affected by the creation of a central sports hub for coverage across its national and regional brands, which was announced in July.
The company, which reported profits of almost £100m last year and whose chief executive, Jim Mullen, departed in March, said the restructure was part of a shift to producing more video and audio content, as well as a live news network.
“Our new structure represents the biggest reorganisation we’ve ever undertaken, even more than in the early days of the digital revolution,” said the Reach chief content officer, David Higgerson. “The changes we are seeing in the landscape right now demand a wholesale change in how we operate and how we tell stories. For our editorial teams, we will need to adopt a different way of working from top to bottom, as we match our resources to our ambitions.”
Higgerson said the company will also be creating 135 new roles as part of the restructure, and aims to “give priority to people whose roles are at risk”.
As part of the restructure, the company also said it was “putting a new focus on digital subscriptions”.
The National Union of Journalists expressed concern at the impact of the latest round of job cuts on staff morale.
“Yet again, morale is being dragged down by the threat of mass redundancies,” said Chris Morley, the NUJ’s national coordinator for Reach. “The thought that any media business can afford to shed hundreds of talented journalists to secure its future makes you wonder what sort of future that will be.”
The company has undergone relentless and deep rounds of redundancies and cost-cutting in recent years.
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In a 12-month period to the end of 2023 the company pushed through three rounds of redundancies – cutting close to 800 roles in total – the biggest annual loss of jobs in the UK newspaper industry for decades.
At the end of last year, Reach employed just over 3,500 staff, according to the company’s latest annual report. The company employs nearly 2,600 across editorial and production.
At its peak in 2018, Reach employed almost 5,500 staff after an acquisition spree included buying Richard Desmond’s Northern & Shell, home to the Express and the Star titles and OK! magazine, and the UK’s largest regional newspaper group, Local World.
