"The plans I had were just getting started," writes its former managing editor.
Kotaku Australia is just one Pedestrian Group outlet that’s been shut down yesterday in a restructure lead by parent group Nine.
Our local version of Kotaku has been shut down alongside other international brands Vice, Gizmodo, Refinery29, and Lifehacker.
In an email to staff yesterday, Pedestrian Group CEO Matt Rowley said that the company was a “highly successful business” but [w]e’ve made the tough decision to focus on our wholly owned Pedestrian brands where we control the strategy, the content, the product, the sales and the outcome – the entire business”.
“This will have an impact on roles within the group and I appreciate the uncertainty this change creates, so we will be in contact immediately with those people,” Rowley continued.
As The Guardian reports, staff at Kotaku Australia were “locked out of the brand social media accounts and the content-management system after the announcement, per Nine’s standard practice”. The site’s last post, from early yesterday morning and about the potential future of LA Noire, seems to confirm this.
Rowley will leave Nine as a result of the restructure, with a new Pedestrian Group CEO to be named in the future.
In total, up to 40 positions at Pedestrian Group — from a total of approximately 90 — were made redundant in the move.
Kotaku Australia Managing Editor, David Smith, confirmed he was impacted by the restructure on Twitter.
“It’s been one of the great joys of my life to wake up every day and run a site I love with all my heart,” Smith, both a friend of this site and a personal friend of mine, wrote.
“We were the second-highest read site in the group after [Pedestrian TV] and we still had so much we wanted to do,” Smith continued. “The plans I had were just getting started. Alas.”
Our hearts go out to those impacted in this wave of job cuts, as we mourn the loss of yet another local reporting outlet.
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