Look back in anger: staff furious at sacking of archivists on ABC’s 90th birthday

The ABC headquarters in Ultimo in Sydney. An announcement, on the public broadcaster’s 90th birthday, of massive cuts to its archivists has outraged other editorial staff. Photograph: Mike Bowers/The Guardian

The ABC chose the month it is celebrating its 90th birthday to gut staff in its acclaimed archives division. The plan is to abolish 75 jobs, 58 permanent positions and 17 contractors, and replace some of them with so-called content navigators tasked with helping harried journalists find material and log metadata into the system.

No. Please don’t @ABC. Our libraries and archives are where our history resides. Different skills required to store and access these materials than journalists possess to -supposedly - write history’s first draft. https://t.co/JVyIp5EEZO

— Anne Summers (@SummersAnne) June 8, 2022