Further cuts are expected to be made to the Daily Telegraph‘s sports coverage in the new year, inside sources have told sportsjournalists.co.uk.
Several leading sportswriters have been cut from the Telegraph‘s staff already this year, while the paper has axed all regular casuals, preferring instead to hire around 40 junior journalists with multi-media skills to service the titles’ website throughout the day.
Now, the talk of the Victoria offices is that the paper is to be “downsized” next year, with fewer pages. Regular freelance contributors have already been told that they will not be required to file as often, if at all.
Some fear that even established features within the sports section may be cut in the latest round of cost cutting.
The paper recently hired former England cricket captain Michael Vaughan and former Chelsea manager Jose Mourinho as columnists, but previously leading journalists including Martin Johnson, Jim Mossop, Sue Mott, Martin Smith, Robert Phillip and Sunday Telegraph sports editor Jon Ryan have been among those to leave the new, “spoke-and-wheel†multi-media newsroom.
Most of the changes have been instituted since the arrival as group head of sport Mark Skipworth.
More on sports desk job cuts:
Chadband made redundant at Standard
Martin Johnson latest to leave the Telegraph
Fraser quits Independent to return to Middlesex
Express to cut more than 70 jobs
Publishers pull the plug on two football blogs
Harry Harris to leave Express
Sports desk at centre of Telegraph concern
Brighton’s weekly sports paper to close
NUJ chapel protest at Independent‘s sports cuts
Mossop and Phillip leave Telegraph
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