The Sun faces significant job cuts as the publisher seeks to cut costs | Media

The publisher of The Sun and the Sun on Sunday launches an extensive program of job cuts in an effort to significantly reduce the core costs of the deficit tabloids.

It is understood that securities staff, including approximately 500 to 600 drafters, were informed earlier this week of the drastic reduction in securities overhead costs.

News Group Newspapers (NGN), the affiliate of Rupert Murdoch News UK, which publishes the titles, would firstly have called for voluntary layoffs in an attempt to achieve its savings goals under the umbrella of An extensive review of all parts of the editorial and commercial aspects of the business. However, staff were told that forced layoffs would follow if the savings targets could not be achieved.

It is not thought that there is a specific target population in mind. However, indications of the size of the savings target are that the average number of layoffs will likely be high. According to one source, about a quarter of the reductions should come from Sun's online business.

The announcement of these cuts came a few months after NGN had tripled the losses, to £ 91.2 million, in its latest financial results, the year before July 1, 2018.

Total revenue fell £ 424m to £ 401m as sales fell 8% and 9% respectively for its daily and Sunday editions.

UK News comes as press industry looks another tough year as readers and advertisers continue to turn to digital media – lion's share goes to Silicon Valley giants Google and Facebook.

However, Group M, the global media division of advertising giant WPP, is forecasting an improvement in the national newspaper market in 2019. The national market for newspaper advertising will fall by 2.2% this year, £ 807 million, a clear improvement from 5% to 11% between 2015 and 2018.

Last week, Mail Online, owned by the parent company Daily Mail, Mail on Sunday and Metro, announced a strong resumption of advertising revenue in the first half.

Revenues increased by 25% year-on-year – up from just 2% in the first half of last year, thanks to a change in the algorithm of pounding Facebook readers – more than offsetting the Daily Mail drops and Sunday Mail.

News UK had not responded to a request for comment at the time of publication.