Pedestrians walk past the News Corporation headquarters building in New York.
Michael Ngale | Bloomberg Getty Images
News Corp. said on Friday it will cut about 1,250 positions, or 5% of the workforce, in the latest round of layoffs that have hit the media and the tech industry in recent months.
Rupert Murdoch’s media company, which owns names such as The Wall Street Journal, New York Post, Barron’s and HarperCollins, said the tough marcoeconomic environment and higher interest rates had hurt the company.
On Thursday, the company reported its earnings results and said that quarterly revenue fell 7% to $2.52 billion from the previous period. Media companies, especially digital media, have been trying to compete in a challenging advertising market.
“As our company passed the stress test of the pandemic with record profits, the initiatives we are currently taking, including the expected 5 percent reduction, or about 1,250 positions this calendar year, will create a strong platform for future growth,” CEO Robert Robert. Thomson said in an earnings release on Friday.
Thomson noted that despite “obvious global challenges,” the professional information business at Dow Jones, publisher of the Journal, saw a rise in revenue. Quarterly revenue for the Dow Jones segment as a whole was up 11% from the year-ago period.
Last month, Murdoch and his son Lachlan Murdoch called off a proposed merger between News Corp. Fox Corp., after determining the “non-optimal combination for shareholders” of one of the companies at this time.
The withdrawn proposal comes as News Corp. The company said Thursday it was still participating in those discussions.