Australian media company Fairfax Media Ltd. (FXJ) will cut about 82 editorial production jobs from its two main Sydney and Melbourne newspapers as part of a drive aimed at saving A$15 million (US$16 million) a year.

In a statement to the Australian Stock Exchange, Fairfax said that after more than a week of staff consultations, it will move forward with its plans to gain significant efficiencies from production processes in the Sydney Morning Herald and The Age allowing further investment in quality journalism.

"The changes in sub-editing processes are expected to result in about 82 (full time equivalent) redundancies in editorial production across these two mastheads," Fairfax said.

According to the journalists' union, job cuts will affect subeditors, graphics artists and designers across the four mastheads The Sydney Morning Herald, Sun-Herald, The Age and Sunday Age.

The company, which also publishes The Australian Financial Review, expects the redundancies to be completed by June 30. The recent changes will result in a net annual cost reduction of A$15 million per year commencing in 2012.

While the company is letting go of 82 employees, it reconfirmed plans to invest more than $3 million in the Sydney and Melbourne newsrooms, to expand its trainee program and to increase its training budgets -- with a focus on multi-media training.

"We have every confidence that the changes we are making in the production process, along with the new management team and the clear strategy we have before us, will create a much stronger, vibrant and profitable company," said CEO and Managing Direct or Greg Hywood.

Last week, Fairfax disclosed plans to outsource sub-editing jobs to Pagemasters, a division of Australian Associated Press.

The Media Entertainment and Arts Alliance, Australia's journalists' union, said in a statement Fairfax had rejected compromise proposals from staff that "would have saved jobs and positioned the company for full integration across multiple news platforms."

According to the union, about 1,000 Fairfax staff and supporters have signed a petition against plans to outsource 90 jobs. "Subeditors play a critical role in producing the quality newspapers for which Fairfax is renowned and the plans to retrench them will cut the heart from them, removing the history and institutional memory that sets them apart from the rest of the media, " the petition said.
Media Alliance federal secretary, Christopher Warren, said, "That so many staff members at Fairfax -- journalists and non-journalists alike -- are pleading with their bosses to rethink this frankly short-sighted costcutting measure shows the degree of concern within the company at their management's plan.

The union has not announced a strike to protest Fairfax's latest decision. It will meet today at 4.30 p.m. to consider their next move.

Early this month, Fairfax said that revenues measured on an as reported basis for the second half to date are currently 4.5% lower than last year. While the rate of decline in advertising levels has abated slightly over the past month, the company does not anticipate market conditions over the remainder of the current financial year improving sufficiently to offset the declines experienced to date.