With just a few weeks before they launch new sites behind paywalls in June, News Corp.’s (NYSE: NWS) Times and Sunday Times are each cutting their editorial budgets by 10 percent, to smoothe out “unsustainable” losses.
Guardian.co.uk has Times editor James Harding’s full staff memo: “We are clearly in a period of galloping technological change and we need to ensure that we have the resources to invest so that we can lead the market in digital journalism.”
How will this affect the proposition the papers put behind the wall? Guardian.co.uk estimates up to 80 jobs could go across the titles, so there will certianly be fewer staff on hand to do journalism; the Scottish bureau is being decimated.
Harding: “We are harnessing the imagination and innovation of the people who have joined Times Online, building on the skills and expertise of The Times newsroom, and we are developing digital journalism that brims with authority and mischief, judgment and flair.”
Talking of paid news sites…
Guardian.co.uk has launched a new subject site, Guardian.co.uk/law, containing, well, law news, analysis and commentary.
It’s free and, in one way, little more than a homepage aggregating law content from across the site. But I’m not alone in wondering whether appealing to a wealthy professional community in this way might end up forming a viable niche paid strategy. “When you have invaluable content in specialist areas, that