Nigel Farage's exit from the Telegraph may be cause for cheer. But there’s a sobering side to this story

The clear-out at the newspaper seems driven less by politics than by a shift towards AI – and journalism will pay the price

Nigel Farage has been writing columns for the Daily Telegraph since 2016, most of which have promoted the previously Brexit and now Reform UK party he leads, or accused his rivals of going soft on immigration. For this privilege the paper’s cash-strapped bosses paid him around £4,000 a month, adding up to nearly half a million pounds over the past decade.

News broke this week that Farage’s services are no longer required by the Telegraph’s new German owners, Axel Springer, though sources close to Farage say that he resigned. The paper is also reported to be negotiating the exit of Allison Pearson, who has been complimentary of far-right activist Tommy Robinson’s “rough-diamond charisma”, which together have prompted rumours that Springer has called a halt to the paper’s rightwards shift, calling it back to the basics of its Conservative party bible past.

All the attention so far has focused on the departure of these controversial columnists: subscribers have threatened to leave in posts on X, with mutterings about Springer’s pro-EU stance and the existence of its internal LGBTQ+ network.

Yet, while there are signs of a tonal shift away from some of the more outre Telegraph rantings, most of the outrage misses the main cause of the change. “This wasn’t politics,” one insider told me. “It was just money.”

The Telegraph is just the latest example of the trend for media organisations: while still attracting trophy prices such as the £575m Springer paid to acquire the newspaper in June, many no longer have the money to pay for journalists. As new Telegraph Media Group chief executive Carolin Hulshoff Pol told staff in announcing the cuts, the Telegraph’s print sales continue to decline, its search traffic is under pressure and AI is changing everything.

In total, more than 100 people are said to be facing the axe before Christmas, almost 20% of editorial and commercial staffing. The company has not confirmed numbers but sports and culture, two departments considered the mainstay of Telegraph coverage, are expected to be harder hit than comment.

Some journalists have already announced their departure. A post by Liam Halligan, who has written a well-regarded economics column for 27 years, prompted sympathy as well as some outrage on X about the possible left turn. Few mentioned the fact that Springer boss Mathias Döpfner is said to be a fan of the platform’s owner, Elon Musk, and encouraged him to back Germany’s far-right AfD party (as reported by the Telegraph itself).

Others to leave include the head of long reads, Lisa Markwell, a former editor of the Independent on Sunday, who no one would accuse of swivel-eyed bigotry.

The perceived toning down of anti-migrant, pro-extremist content in recent weeks is more likely to be a reflection of the current zeitgeist, with both Reform and the Maga right having seen better days. Besides, as one senior Telegraph journalist told me: “As for singling out Brexiteers, they’re all Brexiteers here (bar one or two notable exceptions).”

Before the Springer takeover, during the three-year ownership limbo after Lloyds Bank seized assets from their former owners, the Barclay family, staff had been expecting cuts under a new owner. Other prospective owners, which included RedBird IMI and the owners of the Daily Mail, were all expected to cut costs, especially when the price rose to a level that defied economic reality. This is partly because the independent directors brought in to sell the business were apparently more focused on decorating rather than selling off the top floor.

Media owners in this prolonged time of crisis, facing a business model savaged by the internet and a collapse in trust, have tended to cut jobs slowly, over time. But Springer, obviously in a hurry, having waited 22 years since its first offer for the Telegraph, was not prepared to wait any longer.

Yet Döpfner had cheered a depressed newsroom in June, when he spoke of using the Telegraph to push into the US market as a centre-right, pro-free speech challenger to the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times. His words seemed to echo those of another media mogul with global ambitions: Rupert Murdoch. Amid a legal battle about the future of the Murdoch family trust, Murdoch said that his papers would be the “protector of the conservative voice in the English-speaking world”.

Yet Springer’s expansion plan, we now learn, is based on greater use of AI. Though details of how this technology will be used are yet to be revealed, there is talk of it being utilised to streamline the content produced across all Springer’s outlets, which includes Politico and Business Insider. The lack of a human editor, if not touch, seemed to be evident in an official email jointly signed by Hulshoff Pol and Chris Evans, the paper’s editor; if anything screams “written by ChatGPT”, it’s announcing job cuts with ambitions to turn your company “into a global, AI-powered premium media and intelligence business”.

It is hard to feel sympathy for Nigel Farage, who appears to have no trouble getting people to pay him ridiculous sums of money for various jobs. The same cannot be said for more than 100 journalists who face the possibility of Christmas with no job at all.

Jane Martinson is an academic and Guardian columnist. She is a board member of the Scott Trust, which owns the Guardian Media Group, and writes in a personal capacity