Business Insider Australia and sister websites previously owned by Fairfax Media have been gutted by Nine as part of the merger, with more than half of the 50 staff made redundant.
At least a dozen of the 26 staff who lost their jobs on Tuesday were journalists who produced Business Insider, technology site Gizmodo, entertainment and fashion site PopSugar and gaming site Kotaku. The other job losses came from sales, finance and other support functions.
Sources said five journalists were let go from PopSugar alone.
The redundancies, which were unexpected, are the first editorial jobs to be lost since the merger between Nine and Fairfax, but form part of the 92 job losses announced last week by Nine.
Day one under new owners - a new script for what was the Fairfax reception desk ,Pyrmont pic.twitter.com/4YUobtjrjm
— Deborah Snow (@DeborahSnow) December 11, 2018
Nine is moving fast to restructure the business, flagging on day one that regional newspapers including the Canberra Times are likely to be sold off because they do not target national advertisers.
One of Nine’s properties, Pedestrian TV, will take charge of Business Insider and all the sites that were previously run by Fairfax’s Allure Media, with any remaining staff moving into Pedestrian’s Surry Hills offices next month.
Pedestrian TV, founded by Chris Wirasinha and Oscar Martin and wholly taken over by Nine this year, is aimed at a young audience and has a very different style to Business Insider, which is targeted at aspirational executives and tech-savvy managers.
Pedestrian uses swear words in its headlines and favours quirky stories such as Kendall Jenner Wore A Dress Showing Her Whole Ass In Front Of Actual Royalty.
Nine said the merger between Allure Media and Pedestrian would form Australia’s “leading publishing company targeting Gen Z and millennial audiences”.
The two publishers reached over 2.9 million Australians in October 2018, with 1.2 million in the hard-to-reach under-35 demographic, according to Nine.
“The past 13 years have been a wild ride for Pedestrian and we’re pumped to welcome Allure Media into the family to create a clear publishing leader for marketers wanting to target young Aussies,” Wirasinha said.
“The Allure brands provide global insights combined with highly targeted and loyal local audiences around premium categories, including business, technology, gaming, entertainment, fashion and beauty.”
The Allure chief executive, Jason Scott, and several senior editors are casualties of the merger but the group publisher of business and technology and Business Insider editor-in-chief, Paul Colgan, will remain.
The Nine CEO, Hugh Marks, spoke to staff at the newspapers on Monday and reassured them that Nine would be a broad church.
“This is the very special opportunity in front of us,” Marks said. “To continue to create unique content – be it in the entertainment space or in our journalism – that audiences want; that there is an experience they value; and by recognising success in media comes not from one voice but in fact from differentiated, high-value content of appeal to many audiences.
“For you, as individuals, I believe there are so many opportunities to have an impact in your career with us, in helping shape our shared future.”