Downsized Observer To Close Osm

After weeks of speculation regarding its future, The Observer newspaper has announced that it is downsize to become a four section paper as well as closing the bulk of its monthly supplements including Observer Sport Monthly.

The redesign of the Guardian News & Media-owned Sunday title, hitting newsstands from next year, will have four weekly sections – news, sport, an expanded Review section and the Observer magazine – with a solitary monthly supplement Observer Food Monthly.

The other three supplements, Observer Sport Monthly, Observer Music Monthly and Observer Woman, will close.

A core editorial staff will continue to work solely for The Observer with other Observer journalists to be integrated into the editorial teams that work across the Sunday paper, GNM’s other title, The Guardian, and its website network, guardian.co.uk.

GNM has reopened its voluntary redundancy scheme and the precise number of departures from different editorial departments has not yet been finalised, although the company has said there will be fewer staff at the end of the process.

Editor John Mulholland said: ‘Like all newspapers, we had to make changes both to the way we work and to the products we publish. It has been a difficult few months for staff while we have worked through these changes as part of GNM’s publishing review, and some hard decisions had to be taken given the extremely challenging economic environment for newspapers.

‘The paper we have created as a result of this review will continue to uphold the proud tradition of Observer journalism. It will remain a serious, high-quality, multi-section Sunday newspaper, independently edited, and with its own distinctive voice. I am confident that the new-look paper we will launch early in the new year will continue to be a venue for exciting, robust and authoritative journalism – of the type which our readers rightly expect.’

GNM has already cut around £10m from its editorial budget this year, shedding more than 60 journalists through voluntary redundancy in the process, out of a total of about 850.

In September GNM confirmed that The Observer would continue to be published, ending a summer of speculation about the 200-year-old paper’s future, but also put staff on notice of further integration and possible job cuts.

Like other newspaper groups, GNM and its parent company, Guardian Media Group, is suffering from the effects of the advertising downturn and a long-term decline in print circulation as readers migrate to the internet.

In its annual results GMG revealed that GNM had made an operating loss of £36.8m in the year ending on 29th March.