First fruits of a return News Limited’s investment in EidosMedia’s Méthode systems technology are apparent with announcements this week of job savings (writes Peter Coleman).

Media diarist Nick Leys in The Australian curiously quoted the Media Entertainment & Arts Alliance union with the news that 64.8 FTE positions would go as the publisher apparently reverses the trend towards centralisation.

The redundancies – a third of which are expected to be compulsory – are spread around Brisbane, Adelaide, Melbourne and Sydney.

Media website Mumbrella says the changes, outlines before Christmas, come as the company moves away from ‘sub hubs’ towards the new combined platform for print and web publishing based on Méthode.

A spokesman told the website the system’s simplified content production workflow will “bring real-time publishing decisions into the heart of our newsrooms’.

To some extent this is a reversal of a move towards centralised subbing which News began several years ago, and which – notably in Tasmania – has been met with dismay in regional centres.

Fairfax Media has also been heavily involved in centralisation and outsourcing.

What future for print? While one commentator and researcher told me this week most people he had spoken to thought Fairfax would “simply close down” print editions of its Melbourne and Sydney metro titles before the deadline set to print them on regional plants, News continues to demonstrate that there is a dollar to be had in printing on dead trees.

Rupert Murdoch was sounding confident this week after News Corp reported a five per cent rise in overall revenues in the third quarter of the financial year, despite lower newspaper advertising revenues in Australia.

After the ongoing costs of the News of the World phone hacking scandal, it’s interesting that some of the growth comes from its spiritual successor, the Sunday Sun.