(Bloomberg) -- South China Morning Post, a newspaper owned by Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba Group Holding Ltd., is cutting executives' salaries and asking some workers to take unpaid leave as the coronavirus crisis has hurt revenue.
Chief Executive Officer Gary Liu and Editor-in-Chief Tammy Tam are among 27 senior executives who have agreed to pay reductions immediately, the company said Wednesday on its newspaper website. The publication has also asked all staff members earning more than HK$20,000 a month ($2,580) to take three weeks of unpaid leave by the end of March next year.
The economic slump and advertising cuts caused by the pandemic are pushing some journalists around the world to the sidelines during one of the biggest stories of their careers. While the crisis is driving record readership at websites, it has crippled advertisers -- and the publishers who count on their spending.
There has been “a limited number of redundancies,” the South China Morning Post said on its newspaper website. It's also freezing salaries, except for promotions.
The moves were necessary to stabilize the newspaper and secure operations for the coming year, Liu said.
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