The Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday are to be brought “much closer together” and cut staff as part of a digital drive.
Daily Mail editor Ted Verity said in an email to staff on Thursday that parent company DMGT was proposing “some reduction” in headcount, but only at the print titles.
“Some roles will be placed at risk of redundancy, while other staff may see a change in working pattern, job title, line manager, or duties,” Verity wrote.
Verity couched the decision to bind the daily and Sunday papers closer together as a necessary step for them to survive as DMGT adapts to increasingly digital news consumption.
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“In recent months our print journalists have demonstrated a fantastic hunger to work in close cooperation with our online teams to the huge benefit of Mail Online and Mail+. This is critical because there’s no question that the opportunities for future growth now are digital.
“And, for a company with our unrivalled journalistic talent, those opportunities are enormous.
“So we face a twin task: to carry on producing the brilliant newspapers and magazines our readers love – while aggressively investing in digital expansion.’
Verity said the consolidation was the “second part” of changes announced in September, when he told staff the print Mail and web-only Mail Online would stop each running their own versions of stories.
[Read more: Daily Mail and Mail Online to stop being rivals and start sharing stories]
Verity said: “This is an on-going process but I’m delighted by the way the work we’ve all done so far has eliminated much unnecessary duplication and freed up resources to concentrate on the world-beating journalism on which our titles were built.
“This kind of collaboration – with everyone working together for the same goal of getting our stories read by as many people worldwide as possible, in whatever form they choose – is the key to the future.
“We need to be nimble, open to new ideas and we need to make sure our newsroom is structured in a way that allows us the greatest-possible collaboration across titles and platforms.
“So the next phase of this process will involve bringing the Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday much closer together.”
He said that the two papers would still “of course… retain their “distinct characters, columnists and senior staff.
“But there are many areas where the two titles can be greater than the sum of their parts – allowing the MoS to devote even more energy to breaking the world exclusive news stories it is famous for.”
As well as being editor of the Daily Mail itself Verity’s role as editor-in-chief of Mail Newspapers gives him responsibility across the Mail brands as a seven-day operation.
Elsewhere at DMGT, in January Metro editor Ted Young stepped down amid similarly unspecified redundancies. That shake-up saw the freesheet break down distinctions between its online and print product: the newspaper would no longer have its own dedicated print news content, and Metro.co.uk editor Deborah Arthurs took over both her own and Young’s job.
DMGT simultaneously restructured its ad sales team, citing a “suppressed” market.
And last month the Mail appointed Oliver Holt to be the first seven-day sports writer at the Mail titles – to sit under Lee Clayton, who was re-hired by DMG Media in November to be the company’s global publisher of sport, also operating across the titles.
Mail proprietor Lord Rothermere took DMGT private in December 2021, meaning the business is no longer obliged to disclose as much information about its financial activities.
DMGT is one of numerous publishers to have made cutbacks over the past year. English-language publishers cut at least 1,000 editorial roles across the last four months of 2022, and the same number again across all staff segments in January this year alone.
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