The world’s oldest newspaper didn’t shut, but it will be scaled back. The Observer will be slimmed down to a four-section weekly paper as Guardian News & Media works to reverse deficits managers have declared unsustainable in the long term. The company’s voluntary redundancy scheme is being re-opened but there’s no indication of a required number of job cuts—the paper will, however, be smaller as a result of these cuts.

Guardian.co.uk reports GNM has saved cut £10 million by cutting more than 60 journalist jobs this year—through voluntary redundancy—from a total of about 850 1,700. GNM MD Tim Brooks said in September the company would have to review its biggest cost: staff.

The Observer currently prints five main sections, a magazine and three rotating glossy supplements—Woman, Sport and Food. But from next year only Observer Food will survive and the paper’s standalone travel and business sections are being axed and incorporated into the main paper and the magazine. According to according to Guardian.co.uk, Observer editor john Mulholland said it’s been a “a difficult few months for staff” but he added that the paper “will remain a serious, high-quality, multi-section Sunday newspaper, independently edited, and with its own distinctive voice”. Its journalists, and the people behind a public campaign to save the paper, will certainly hope so.

Mulholland broke the news to staff at meetings today where he said a “core” group of Observer staff would remain on the title, but the rest would be integrated into platform-neutral teams to work across the Sunday paper, The Guardian and Guardian.co.uk. More details on a GNM publishing review designed to reverse the £36.8 million loss in 2008-9 are expected at more company meetings tomorrow.

There is a ring of deja vu to this: last May GNM editor-in-chief Alan Rusbridger spoke in interviews of the need for a single news, business and sport team across GNM—for print and online; the plan was for a small team to work specifically for the Sunday title. So while the paper will soon be physically smaller, its strategic place in the GNM structure has been mostly unchanged for 18 months.

Disclosure: paidContent:UK’s parent company ContentNext Media is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Guardian News & Media.

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