Three tranches, not one reshuffle
On 22 July 2026, members of Stuff Digital’s live news and commissioning teams were called into HR meetings across Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch to hear ‘proposed changes.’ The invitation, obtained by the NZ Herald, promised staff would be told what is being proposed and why ahead of a consultation period.
This is not a single tidy restructure. There are at least two distinct proposals on the table. The first would amalgamate the audio and video teams and cut headcount from 34 to 23, a reduction of 11 positions, while shifting visual journalist roles out of Auckland and into Wellington and Christchurch. The second hits 28 roles across digital production, the National Correspondents team and specialist journalism, with a net loss of eight and the team shrinking to 20.
Those two land on top of a recent round of roughly 16 redundancies in Stuff’s print production team. Three rounds of cuts inside one masthead is not a wobble. It is a trend line.
The Trade Me question
Here is the part that should give business readers pause. Sinead Boucher bought Stuff from Nine Entertainment for $1 in 2020, then in December 2024 split the company into Stuff Digital and Masthead Publishing so each could chase its own strategy. When Trade Me took a 50 percent stake in Stuff Digital in June 2025, it read as the clearest signal yet that a viable commercial model for digital news might actually exist.
Roughly a year on, the digital arm is cutting hard. If a partnership with one of New Zealand’s most profitable online platforms cannot underwrite editorial stability, the honest read is that the economics of digital publishing are so compressed no ownership structure fixes them without continued staff reductions. Laura Maxwell took over as chief executive from Boucher this month, and her opening act is a consultation over redundancies.
Staff call the logic contradictory
Stuff staff are not accepting the numbers quietly. A leaked letter argues that cutting the audio and video team did not make sense given video was apparently booming and generating revenue alongside the company’s own push toward more multimedia. Auckland visual journalists, already described as overworked, would be squeezed further.
The E tu union has escalated. A leaked internal email calls the proposals another potential savage blow to the quality of the publications and brands the plan illogical, with staff given only a week to decide whether to reapply for roles that in some cases do not match their skills. The union has written to Stuff demanding it halt the process and flagged legal options. Separately, members have rejected a pay offer delivering no increase beyond the 2 percent stepped rise already negotiated, and could ballot on industrial action.
A sector shrinking for the first time in fifteen years
Stuff is a symptom, not the disease. Government figures from the Ministry for Culture and Heritage’s 2025 Infometrics sector profiles show media and broadcasting employment fell 5.3 percent in the year to March 2025, the sharpest drop of any cultural sector. GDP contribution fell 3.0 percent to $5.0 billion, across 24,959 filled jobs. Crucially, this was the first time overall cultural-sector employment had declined since 2010, which points to structural rather than cyclical pain. The same window saw the closure of Newshub and programme cuts at TVNZ.
The people running newsrooms are candid about the moment. On 21 July 2026, Newsroom co-founder Mark Jennings said the events of the past couple of weeks have not gone well for us, while Politik founder Richard Harman conceded the media is not really serving its audiences all that well, across the board.
What it means for business
For advertisers, fewer journalists means fewer credible editorial environments and a shrinking pool of quality local inventory. For anyone in public affairs or media relations, a thinned-out National Correspondents team and fewer specialist reporters means a narrower pipeline to reach decision-makers, investors and customers. And the two-decade advertising decline that hollowed out the industry is now being compounded by AI-generated search summaries stripping referral traffic from publishers.
The consultation period will decide the exact headcount. But the direction is set, and Trade Me’s involvement no longer looks like the circuit-breaker it once promised to be. If the strongest commercial pairing in the market still ends in redundancy meetings, businesses relying on local media should plan for an even leaner press than the one they have now.
Sources
- Staff called to HR meeting at news website Stuff (2026-07-22)
- Media Insider: Confidential HR invitation – Stuff journalists called to meeting to hear ‘proposed changes’ (2026-07-22)
- Media Insider: Stuff staff hit out in leaked letter as fresh cuts loom (2026-07-22)
- Media Insider: Stuff faces staff legal threat over proposed new journalist job cuts amid fears of loss of quality (2026-07-22)
- Stuff ‘consciously uncouples’ into two separate digital and print businesses (2024-12-11)
- Infometrics sector profiles 2025 – Ministry for Culture & Heritage (2025)
- The Detail: Media under fire from all angles (2026-07-21)