Culture editor of The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age Osman Faruqi and former Private Sydney columnist Andrew Hornery have headlined the departures at Nine Publishing this week, as the company completes the process of executing major redundancies foreshadowed earlier this year.
There were a raft of other departures from across the Nine mastheads, including senior Australian Financial Review correspondents Aaron Patrick, Ben Potter and Michael Pelly, as well as the Herald’s chief sports scribe Andrew Webster, senior reporter Helen Pitt, North American correspondent Farrah Tomazin, books editor Jason Steger, Indigenous Affairs editor Jack Latimore and cartoonist John Shakespeare.
Guardian Australia reports the departures also include senior writer at The Age Royce Millar, social affairs editor Jewel Topsfield and music writer Martin Boulton, with deputy news director Angus Livingston resigning despite being among those rejected for a voluntary redundancy.
While a Nine spokesperson confirmed in a statement that 85 redundancies were taken from the newsrooms, print operations and audience and commercial growth divisions as part of the now-concluded process, other sources at the company have told Crikey that the number of employees applying for voluntary redundancy was significantly higher.
One source estimated the number of applications to be in excess of 150, which would represent a significant proportion of the entire publishing division. In July, 500 staff from across the highly-unionised mastheads went on strike for five days after pay negotiations with management broke down. Part of the industrial action involved requests from union leaders for a reduction in the redundancy headcount, which was put forward by Nine management despite the profitability of the publishing division.
Nine’s spokesperson declined to comment on the number of applications made for voluntary redundancy, but confirmed that in addition to the 85 redundancies, a number of staff had also resigned from the publishing division.
“As foreshadowed in June, we have been working with our people in reshaping the publishing business to ensure a sustainable future in response to the challenging advertising market and collapse of the Meta deal,” the spokesperson said.
“We will be providing support for all employees transitioning from the business. Every one of these people depart with our gratitude and appreciation for their contributions to Nine’s world-class mastheads.”
Hornery told Crikey he was “very happy” with his decision to leave, saying he had “a couple of irons in the fire” for the future.
“No-one gets into journalism to become rich, so when there’s a big offer of money, it’d be silly to not jump at it,” he said.
“The business is changing and it would be silly to not try and change with it — the Herald is a wonderful, enduring journalistic beacon in our society and it’s been a privilege to be part of it for such a long time.”
Hornery named former editors John Lyons and Peter Fray as his favourites he’d worked under in almost three decades with The Sydney Morning Herald. Eighteen of those years were spent penning the Private Sydney column about Sydney’s social scene.
After receiving questions from Crikey, Hornery posted about his decision on his personal Instagram account.
Shakespeare, meanwhile, told Crikey he was leaving a “dream job” to “salvage the super a little bit”.
“Ironically it’s been my happiest time there under editor Bevan Shields, who I’ve loved working with ever since he was a Canberra correspondent,” he said.
Faruqi departs Nine after two and a half years in the role, having previously worked as head of audio at Schwartz Media and as an editor at the ABC.
Correction: A previous version of this article quoted a Nine statement to the effect that none of the 85 redundancies were forced and all were voluntary. Nine has since amended its statement to clarify that there were in fact a number of involuntary redundancies.
