Media group News Corp Australia has flagged job cuts across its newsrooms, including its photographic departments, in a new cost-cutting push to streamline and "modernise" its operations.
News Corp said there would be "a number of redundancies nationally" from changes announced to staff in meetings held on Tuesday in newsrooms in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane and Adelaide.
A major change will be a shift to a "hybrid" model for photographic departments in which News will retain a core team of "photographic specialists" and use freelance and agency photographers.
No estimate of the number of photographers' jobs to be affected was given.
The group's director of editorial management, Campbell Reid, said the changes were needed as part of a new approach to "longstanding newsroom processes".
"Like every other business today, we have to identify opportunities to improve and modernise the way we work to become more efficient," Mr Reid said in a statement.
"We need to organise our editorial operations so we can preserve in print and excel in digital."
Media sector union, the MEAA, said up to two-thirds of photographic staff will be cut in some cities, and the changes will remove talent within News Corp's mastheads.
"Once again it is front line editorial staff in already stretched newsrooms - the very people audiences rely on to tell their stories - who are bearing the brunt of these short-sighted cuts for short-term shareholder gains," MEAA media director Katelin McInerney said.
News will also make changes in its print production processes that are also likely to result in redundancies, however no specific details of the changes have been released.
The changes are understood to affect metropolitan and local newsrooms.
The move by News Corp follows rival Fairfax last week announcing a $30 million-a-year savings push that will also result in job losses.
Fairfax has begun consultation in its metropolitan newsrooms to implement changes it said will save $30 million a year, including non-staff costs, by 2017/18, and secure its metropolitan mastheads for the future.
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