Crikey owner Private Media slashes workforce by 15pc

afr.com:

Private Media, the publisher of Crikey and other titles, has cut its workforce by 15 per cent as it reels from a slow advertising market.

In an all-staff call on Thursday afternoon, Private Media chief executive Will Hayward said the company would be forced to cut three journalists and five non-editorial roles. Private Media publishes four websites: Crikey, SmartCompany, The Mandarin and Inc. Australia.

Private Media CEO Will Hayward announced the redundancy plans in an all-staff call on Thursday afternoon. 

Mr Hayward, sources with knowledge of the update said, told staff the company had grown over the past three years, but the previous year had been down. In a company in which 80 per cent of costs were associated with staff, Private Media had waited as long as it could to hope for the advertising market to improve.

Other revenue, including from events, had not made up the shortfall. A restructure of sorts is planned, he is understood to have said.

The Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance union was invited on to the call with the company’s staff. In public statements, Private media says it has about 50 employees. Those affected will enter a consultation period before being made redundant.

Mr Hayward declined to comment.

Private Media made months of headlines after it was sued by News Corp chairman Lachlan Murdoch over a piece by Crikey political editor Bernard Keane last year, which linked the Murdochs to the January 6 riot in Washington following Donald Trump’s loss to Joe Biden.

The comment piece sparked an angry back-and-forth between Mr Murdoch’s lawyers and the media company. Crikey’s editors initially offered to apologise, but a dispute over the wording of the apology spun out into a defamation suit that was