The wave of job losses afflicting Australia’s media publishers has continued after it was announced Nine-owned Pedestrian Group will gut its news websites and slash staff.

Pedestrian Group operates its namesake Pedestrian and Pedestrian.TV news websites as well as Australian editions of third-party brands including Vice, Refinery29, Gizmodo, Lifehacker and Kotaku.

On Monday, Pedestrian chief executive Matt Rowley confirmed his exit from the struggling web business and announced all third-party websites will be disolved.

The move means the likes of Vice and Gizmodo will no longer be published in Australia, with the majority of their Surry Hills-based staff to be let go and not reabsorbed into Nine’s offices in North Sydney.

“We’ve made the tough decision to focus on our wholly-owned Pedestrian brands where we control the strategy, the content, the product, the sales and the outcome – the entire business,” Mr Rowley said in a statement to staff.

“This will have an impact on roles within the group and I appreciate the uncertainty this change creates, so we will be in contact immediately with those people.

“The process to appoint a new CEO is currently underway and will be announced to the team in due course.”

Nine Entertainment took a majority stake in Pedestrian for $10 million in 2015 before acquiring the remaining 40 per cent of the company in 2018 for $39 million.

The left-leaning Pedestrian website and its third-party operations targeted a younger audience than Nine Entertainment’s flagship Nine News and Nine Honey websites.

Pedestrian is understood to have been hit hard by an industry-wide downturn in advertising revenue across print, TV and websites, as traditional advertisers divert funds into platforms like TikTok and Instagram.

Nevertheless, Monday’s decision shocked industry insiders as the cuts come just weeks after Nine Entertainment announced mass job cuts from its struggling broadcast television team and metro newspapers.

At the time, it was understood that Nine’s digital media assets had been spared from the job cuts, which CEO Mike Sneesby blamed on falling ad revenue and the end of Meta’s landmark content deal with publishers.  

The nixed Meta deal - which compensated Australian news publishers for content used on social media - was a lifeline for struggling networks and newspapers due to the decline in free-to-air linear broadcast audiences and shrinking newspaper circulations. 

Nine's dramatic cuts come as its TV arm has pinned its ad revenue hopes on the upcoming 2024 Paris Olympics, promising viewers two 24-hour free-to-air channels and comprehensive streaming coverage of the games.