Local media behemoth, Singapore Press Holdings, has announced on October 11 that they will be speeding up their planned staff cuts by end of 2017 albeit the 32 percent rise in full-year net profit.

Wait, what?

Here is what you need to know about the SPH retrenchment in 60 seconds.

A reduction of 230 heads

The new CEO of SPH, Ng Yat Chung said that the headcount will be reduced by 230 by the end of the year, as quoted by The Straits Times.

Out of the 230, 130 will be retrenched—the remaining job reductions are due to termination of contracts, retirement, and loss of job roles due to the restructuring of work process.

In other words, no matter what it’s called, 230 people would be out of job.

Full year net profit rose 32% to $350.1 million

Wait, shouldn’t that be good news? It depends on how you look at it.

The profit did not come from the newspaper or magazine businesses, the ones we’re familiar with.

It came from its classified business 701Search (a gain of $149.7 million) and investment properties (a fair-value gain of $57.4 million).

Yes, SPH actually own properties, such as Paragon and The Seletar Mall.

Newsrooms and Sales are in hot soup aka print is dying

According to Channel NewsAsia, the newsrooms and sales operation will see a reduction of 15% of their staff.

Despite the profits, their advertising revenue went down by 16.9% and circulation revenue declined by 5.1% .

This isn’t that unexpected: how many of you are still buying newspaper every day to read on the train? And by newspaper, I mean the physical newspaper.

I for one only know one, and he’s my boss. That dinosaur didn’t even know how to use Internet banking #justsaying

What’s next

Mr. Ng mentioned that there are no plans to consolidate or shut down any of the company’s daily newspapers.

They will be investing in digital, data analytics, radio and content marketing. They are also looking to expand their non-media business such as property, education and et cetera.

Sounds good. But still, the lesson here is this: always learn new skills. You never know when you’ll be made redundant.

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This article was first published on goodyfeed.com

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