Ad Environment Pressures News Corp

News Corp. said Thursday it will cut about 1,250 positions, or 5% of its workforce, in the latest round of layoffs that have hit the media and tech industries in recent months, reports CNBC.

Rupert Murdoch’s media company, which owns such names as The Wall Street Journal, the New York Post, Barron’s and HarperCollins, said the tough marcoeconomic environment and higher interest rates have been hurting the company.

On Thursday the company reported earnings results and said its quarterly revenue decreased 7% to $2.52 billion from the year-earlier period. Media companies, particularly digital media, have been trying to contend with a challenging advertising market.

CEO Thompson

“Just as our company passed the stress-test of the pandemic with record profits, the initiatives now underway, including an expected 5 percent headcount reduction, or around 1,250 positions this calendar year, will create a robust platform for future growth,” CEO Robert Thomson said in the earnings release Thursday.

Thomson noted that despite “the obvious global challenges,” its professional information business at Dow Jones, the publisher of the Journal, saw revenue surge. Quarterly revenue for the overall Dow Jones segment rose 11% from the year-earlier period.

Last month, Murdoch and his son Lachlan Murdoch called off the proposed merger between News Corp. and Fox Corp., after determining “a combination is not optimal for shareholders” of either of the companies at this time.

The withdrawn proposal came as News Corp. has been in advanced talks to sell its stake in Move Inc., the parent company of Realtor.com, to commercial real estate company CoStar Group. The company said Thursday it was still engaged in those discussions.