Guardian News & Media to Cut About 100 Jobs

The odds are good that unless you happen to be a news junkie that you don’t know much about Guardian News & Media, so before we talk about the companies impending job cuts lets take a look at how the organization chooses to describe itself, “About Guardian US: Guardian News & Media (GNM) is the publisher of the US news website www.guardiannews.com. It publishes the award-winning Guardian and Observer newspapers and guardian.co.uk website in the UK. Guardian US, the digital operation in New York, was created with the aim of combining the Guardian’s internationalist, online journalism with US voices and expertise. Guardian US creates a hub for Guardian readers in the US, merging the innovation and energy of a start-up with ground-breaking journalism and the backing of the Guardian brand.”

The news company is getting ready to layoff about 100 workers in order to set its bottom line to right. The jobs, which will be cut of roughly fifteen percent of the editorial staff, are coming from the companies operations in the UK, if the rumors are to be believed, as the company has yet to put out an official release about the job cuts. This also leaves us wondering when the cuts will go into effect, and what kind of severance terms, if any will be offered to the workers who are soon to be displaced.

Of course this is not the only journalistic endeavor to be impacted by the poor economy. For those of you who missed out on our earlier coverage of much larger cuts to Fairfax Media Limited  here is an excerpt that will get you up to speed in no time at all, “For those of you do not follow the world of Australian journalism the company is talking about a real loss of about 1,900 jobs when all of the cuts are said and done. These cuts will not be made in a single wave. The jobs will be cut in smaller stages between now and March of 2013. By that time the company is hoping to move farther away from the print editions it has used in the past and move more towards digital editions and other methods of delivering news. The company is so committed to the change that they are getting ready to shutter some of the printing facilities…” So, as you can see this is a precarious time to be a journalist, as companies that were already struggling to make money in the changing digital market now have to deal with a double whammy from this global economic downturn.

Interestingly enough the Guardian did put out a release about their recent high profile hiring  of a new journalist to the staff. Here is an excerpt from that release, “Today the Guardian announced the addition of Glenn Greenwald, the renowned political commentator and bestselling author. The announcement was made by Guardian US Editor in Chief Janine Gibson. In his new role, Greenwald will write a daily blog and weekly column appearing in the editorial section of the Guardian – Comment is Free.”