Around 35 jobs are expected to be lost following the consultation, as DC Thomson cuts roles in the business’ award-winning data journalism team, marketing, insights, magazines, and Beano Studios as first reported by the Press Gazette.
The proposal is part of wider efforts at the Dundee-based publisher to protect the profits of its flagship magazines, Printweek understands.
A spokesperson for DC Thomson said: “Following a strategic review, we are ceasing publishing four print titles – This England, 110% Gaming, Unicorn Universe and My Weekly Pocket Novels – which are not commercially sustainable in the longer term.
“Unfortunately, these changes will have an impact on the teams that support them and a small number of colleagues are now in consultation and will be fully supported throughout.”
Over the past few years, DC Thomson has taken an aggressive approach to restructuring, with its March 2024 accounts, published 31 December, showing the firm cutting its headcount from 1,600 to 1,300 in the 2023/24 financial year.
Even with recurring trading revenues falling from £143m to £135m, the company – which publishes The Beano, Scottish national paper The Sunday Post, The Evening Express and Evening Telegraph – has managed to bump its total gross margin from 58% to 61%, thanks in part to the fall in costs of paper and outsourced print from £60.5m to £52.3m.
Nick McGowan-Lowe, national organiser for Scotland at the National Union of Journalists, told Printweek the latest round of cuts were bound to anger further journalists working at the company, especially so soon after it posted pre-tax profits of £93.8m.
He continued: “It is clear that the unsustainably high dividends being taken out of the business by the owners are only made possible by closing titles and cutting the jobs of hard-working journalists, who last year were refused any pay increase at all despite there being a cost-of-living crisis.”
In 2023/24, DC Thomson directors recommended a total dividend of £25.7m, following 2022/23’s dividend of £24.9m.
"Instead of investing in quality local journalism and entertaining magazines, DC Thomson have been demanding that staff produce more while being given less,” McGowan-Lowe added.
“While the majority of these cuts have fallen on the magazines division, they will send a shiver round the experienced and talented journalists working on the newspapers and online.
“The hollowing out of the award-winning and innovative data journalism team, whose investigations have been recognised internationally, is short-sighted and will disappoint readers and subscribers who rely on the local newspaper titles for news and analysis of their areas."
