Former News of the World journalists are being offered jobs in Siberia, Spain and Dubai, as News International scrambles to find jobs for the estimated 283 staff who lost their jobs when the newspaper closed.
According to The Independent, positions up for grabs include “application development consultant” in Bulgaria for Dow Jones, “TV product manager” for Fox in Spain, “stock controller” in Italy and a “business controller” in Sweden.
In July, NI announced that the ‘vast majority’of NoW will be found other jobs within News International, but one former member of staff has told The Guardian that this was ‘an empty promise”.
It appears unlikely they will find jobs on other UK titles – according to the Indy only 30 NoW news staff have been found jobs within NI, while another 30 are working on the NoW mag Fabulous, which now appears in the Saturday edition of The Sun.
Today’s report said:
In recent days, staff have been invited to News International’s headquarters in Wapping, east London, for 15-minute interviews with human-resources staff. They have been offered counselling and the opportunity to retrain during their 90-day leave.
The NotW team has also been invited to apply for around 175 jobs covering four branches of the News Corp business: Fox, the publishing company HarperCollins, Dow Jones and News International.
Many of the Dow Jones posts are for financial experts. There is also a job going as a “symbology analyst Russian language”. Symbology is the art of expression through symbols.
A News International spokeswoman told The Guardian that “everybody is being spoken to individually as part of a 90-day consultation and we are exploring every opportunity to find employment for those affected by the closure of the News of the World.”
But an ex-staff member told the paper:
They clearly don’t have jobs for everyone. And even if they did, they couldn’t really parachute people into the Sun. It’s a very competitive newsroom and it would create all sorts of resentment and conflict if suddenly ex News of the World staff were given preferential treatment.
Email pged@pressgazette.co.uk to point out mistakes, provide story tips or send in a letter for publication on our "Letters Page" blog
