The Guardian to cut back media coverage

The Guardian is to cut back on its weekly print media coverage as part of ongoing cost savings operations. The cuts will see Monday’s dedicated media section reduced down from two pages to one. A report in Campaign also suggests that insiders at the paper suspect the paper’s website will carry less media news, although the publishers deny this will be the case.

It has been reported that one media journalist has already taken voluntary redundancy and others may be expected to report to the business desk as part of the newspapers ongoing restructuring.

A spokesperson for The Guardian told journalists: “As part of our three-year plan we’re looking at addressing costs in all parts of the business and as such we’ve decided to reduce our print media section on a Monday from two pages to one.

“We remain committed to providing the very best media coverage from breaking news to in-depth industry analysis and comment.”

The reduction in media coverage will come as yet another blow to Guardian readers who fondly remember Monday’s Media Guardian (a weekly supplement that often ran to a dozen or more pages) as the go to source for media related news, comment and pages and pages of jobs.

The job pages were so popular, I have spoken with a number of journalists who told me that back in the day the Media Guardian was actually banned from a number of rooms dues to editors fears that the entire editorial team would be tempted to rival publications or more “cushy roles” in PR and marketing.

The sad thing is, the scaling back of The Guardian’s media coverage has nothing to do with a lack of good quality media-related news. The industry has never been faster or more exciting. It’s primarily the shift of recruitment advertising from the pages of Monday’s Media Guardian to online jobs portals and social networks like LinkedIn that’s killed it.

Media people bought The Guardian for Monday’s job section and enjoyed the editorial coverage as an interesting and informative by-product. One could not survive without the other.