I am told that News Limited Circulation Director Catherine Woodside has resigned from her role with the company. This will be a blow to newsagents who have been waiting for more than two years for an outcome from News’ review, led by Catherine, of newspaper home delivery arrangements.
It was Catherine who responded to the newsagent associations following my News Limited in crisis on newspaper home delivery post of last month. Besides denying there was a crisis she established yet another round of discussions to talk through home delivery plans for the future.
Catherine’s reported departure is on the back of series of leadership changes within News Limited since Kim Williams took over as Managing Director. Crikey yesterday carried a report from an anonymous writer from within News Limited about the staffing changes going inn in the organisation. It starts with:
“In the continuing saga of executive management cuts at News Ltd (Macourt, Baxter, Howard, Klose, Bulmer, Sligo, Eilert … and you haven’t yet reported on Evan Hannah or Michael Prain) there’s another indicator of the big changes in management approach and culture. The long-stated and cherished policy of honouring loyalty is out the door. It was a hallmark of former CEO John Hartigan’s reign, which he stated time and again that loyalty was to be acknowledged and rewarded.
And ends some paragraphs later with:
“These ‘redundancies’ have made many of us middle and senior managers very, very nervous. Doing your job well, and having years of solid service behind you, count for nothing in the new News. And what about the Boston Consulting boys now embedded in Macourt’s old office.”
I don’t know the story behind the departure of Catherine Woodside from News Limited. The concern for newsagents will be that their point person within News through the more than two years of consultation and analysis in pursuit of the newspaper distribution model of the future is no longer at the company.
While it is only speculation I do wonder if Catherine’s departure is in any way related to the apparent decision by News over a month ago to delay moving on the newspaper distribution model, thereby extending the period of uncertainty for distribution newsagents.
Perhaps Catherine’s departure is related to the fact we haven’t really had much progress over the last two years. Differcult times I know, but we need to be moving forward yesterday.
Have heard from a HWT employee that the entire call will be moving to adelaide middle of this year, all the people currently working the phones will be laid off.
call centre that is.
I have no doubt that the News Limited we will see by July of this year will be vastly differently, internally, that the company we see today.
None of this matters, our future is up to us … entirely.
Not quite Mark. Some of us have distribution businesses that turn a profit. From what i can work out we do not have a real say in the distribution ultimate decision and we MAY lose a fair bit of our income stream. Having said this i still think we’ll end up with a hub and spoke model.