Jobs being cut at Dow Jones Newswires

Dow Jones plans to cut an undisclosed number of jobs at its Newswire operations as part of a restructuring that also includes its Factiva operations, according to a Bloomberg story.

The Bloomberg story stated, “The number of positions to be eliminated will be announced at a company meeting this morning, a spokeswoman, Diane Thieke, said. Employees who will lose their jobs were to be contacted yesterday, the company said in a statement.

“The cuts follow Dow Jones’s purchase in October of the Reuters Group’s 50 percent stake in the Factiva.com news database for $153 million. Dow Jones, which is based in New York, has said it planned to reduce the number of reporters who do similar work as it expands digital and business information services.

“Dow Jones is also revamping The Journal. As part of the business newspaper’s recent redesign, reporters from Newswires and MarketWatch are expected to more regularly file stories for The Journal’s Web site, while Journal reporters concentrate on the daily print publication.”

Read more here.

A Reuters story stated, “About 22 jobs will be cut, said Steve Yount, president of the Independent Association of Publishers’ Employees, which represents some Dow Jones workers.

“Factiva has about 750 employees, according to a previous Dow Jones news release. It was not immediately clear how many people Dow Jones Newswires employs.”

Read the rest of the Reuters story here.

In addition, this release was issued by the company shortly after midnight on Wednesday. Yes, I was still awake to catch it. Don’t ask me why.