The publisher of the Mirror and the Express newspapers has warned that up to 420 staff could face redundancy, as part of a continued cost-cutting drive.
Reach, which also owns hundreds of regional newspapers including the Birmingham Mail, Liverpool Echo and Manchester Evening News, has been battling higher costs resulting from inflation, as well as a slump in print advertising as the UK economy falters.
The move comes just weeks after the publisher, which owns hundreds of regional newspapers, said it would cut 200 jobs as part of a £30m cost-cutting drive, after disappointing sales of print and web advertising during last year’s World Cup and festive season.
The newspaper group, which also owns the Daily Star and a network of regionally-focused news websites including Glasgow Live and Hampshire Live, said it is reviewing spending across the whole business because of higher costs resulting from inflation.
It said the 420 affected staff – including 192 journalists – had been informed on Tuesday that they were at risk of redundancy. Reach added that resignations, job moves and redeployments among this group of workers would reduce the number of redundancies.
The company, which employs about 4,000 permanent staff in the UK and Ireland, said 80 journalists have been made redundant so far this year as a result of the previously announced job cuts.
The publisher is also investing heavily in a digital operation to tap into the US market.
The National Union of Journalists (NUJ) called the announcement of fresh job cuts at Reach a “major blow to staff”, coming just two weeks after the conclusion of the redundancy process announced in January.
Laura Davison, the NUJ’s national organiser, said: “As the company seeks to make good on its commitment to cut costs by £30m this year, it is our members who are yet again feeling the pain.
“Our objective in this process will be to support our members who have been buffeted every which way by the business since the new year.”
The NUJ is calling on Reach to “mitigate the impacts” of the latest announcement.
A spokesperson for Reach said: “With the current market headwinds we are facing we have had to take decisive action to review costs across the entire business including print production, energy sourcing, external suppliers, as well as, regrettably, the size of some of our teams.”
Reach reported earlier in March that it had made an operating profit of £106m in 2022, which was 27% lower than a year earlier.
In recent weeks, Reach also announced that the first articles written using artificial intelligence had been published on its local news site InYourArea.co.uk, but the company’s boss said journalists should not worry that this would mean they would be replaced by machines.
