The move has been slammed by the broadcaster’s former national arts correspondent,Michaela Boland,who left the organisation in 2020.
“ABC management’s degradation of the arts continues,” Boland tweeted on Thursday.
Journalist Jane Howard,who won a Walkley award for an arts story written for the ABC in 2019,decried the move as “a slap in the face to every artist and arts worker in Australia”.
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The union representing journalists and performers,the MEAA,said the move was “a serious blow to informed coverage of Australia’s cultural sector” and particularly damaging for audiences in regional Australia,who would be left “with even fewer opportunities to participate in our artistic and cultural life”.
An internal ABC document sighted by this masthead reveals that “a Managing Editor Arts and an Arts Digital Editor role will be abolished” under the changes,which will see 120 redundancies across the organisation as a whole.
Those positions are the most senior in the ABC and dedicated specifically to the arts. The managing editor had responsibility for TV and online,while the digital editor managed a small team creating content specifically for the ABC website. The flagship Sunday afternoon TV magazine programArt Works is understood to be unaffected by the changes,while Radio National will continue to manage its own arts-related content.