The Oz sheds staff. The redundancy machine is whirring into action again at News Limited, with up to 10 journalists to leave The Australian. In an email sent to staff this morning, editor-in-chief Chris Mitchell flagged that forced redundancies will be needed if staff cannot be redeployed elsewhere. Mitchell wrote in the email:

“As part of our efforts to meet the challenges in our industry, we constantly review our staffing levels to ensure we have the best mix of skills and roles to meet requirements. We have recently identified several areas where we need to restructure. We are now seeking to identify up to 10 redundant positions. Production staff are not affected. Employees will be notified when their roles have been identified. Efforts will be made to redeploy staff to other sections of the company. If they are not redeployed, they will receive all redundancy payments and entitlements.”

It has been an open secret for some time in The Oz’s newsroom that the door for redundancies was open again. Crikey understands at least five staffers have already been given the green light to go including several section editors and at least one photographer. The Australian made 30 staff redundant last year, including political economy guru George Megaologenis, chief political correspondent Matthew Franklin and China correspondent Michael Sainsbury. — Matthew Knott

The setting Sun. News Corp has undertaken a further leadership reshuffle ahead of the group’s split this week. The group’s big profit earner, The Sun, will have a new editor as Dominic Mohan is replaced with David Dinsmore. But unlike the bloodletting we saw in the empire’s Melbourne and Brisbane trading posts earlier this month, the change at The Sun is voluntary and starts tonight, our time. Dinsmore is News International’s director of operations and a former senior executive in Scotland. He’s a former Sun acting managing editor. Mohan is moving to a senior role advising Robert Thomson, chief executive of the new News Corporation, ahead of the formal separation this Friday.

What was omitted by News when announcing the leadership change was the weakening sales performance of The Sun (and lately, The Sun on Sunday, which replaced the News of The World). Mohan became editor in September 2009, and The Sun‘s daily sales that month averaged 3.079 million. In April of this year the paper sold an average 2.281 million papers a day. The fall from September 2009 was 798,000 copies a day, or 25%. But Mohan not only kept his job, he was promoted because of his handling of staff relations as more journalists from the paper have been arrested and in many cases charged with bribery and making corrupt payments.

And in a further move, a German business magazine has reported that James Murdoch is being promoted to replace Chase Carey (chief operating officer of News Corp and the about-to-appear 21st Century Fox) as chairman of Sky Deutschland. — Glenn Dyer

Paper’s gunna buy you a diamond ring. As the Geelong real estate ad wars rumble on, one of the parties has taken a humorous approach to the otherwise gravely serious allegations set to play out in a Victorian court. Crikey readers will recall that one of the duelling parties, Metro Media Publishing, suggested in a County Court statement of claim earlier this year that bitter rival News Limited had allegedly festooned local Hayeswinckle agent Danny Hayes’ wife with a “diamond ring” to keep his expenditure in News’ Geelong Advertiser tent. Flick to page three of this week’s edition of MMP publication The Weekly Review Greater Geelong, and what do you find? An $8000 diamond ring giveaway and a feature later in the book on the “four Cs to consider” when choosing it …

MMP sources say 2000 entries have already been received. But any resemblance to actual events is, as they say, purely coincidental. — Andrew Crook

Gawker out of Snowden step. News moves fast these days. Too fast for Gawker. Days into the Edward Snowden/NSA story, the site did what it loves to do most — take pot shots at WikiLeaks and Julian Assange. Noting WikiLeaks was claiming to be helping Snowden negotiate asylum in Iceland, Adrian Chen wrote:

“If there’s one downside to Edward Snowden’s NSA leaks it’s that they have offered a new platform for Wikileaks founder Julian Assange’s stateless self-aggrandizement … How Julian Assange might positively influence Snowden’s asylum case in Iceland, when he is himself currently a fugitive avoiding a Swedish s-x crimes case, is unclear …”.

The author continued sledging for another few hundred words.

Two days later, erm, “Edward Snowden Is On His Way To Moscow With Help From WikiLeaks“. The site noted that apparently Snowden would be seeking asylum in Ecuador — indeed, WikiLeaks’s South American legal team are currently assisting him in the application. Also on Gawker, more Paula Deen updates, and how a wolf chased a motorcyclist for like a mile, dude. — Guy Rundle

The Courier‘s grand indulgence. A lovely little typo from page two of Ballarat’s Courier Domain section on Saturday. Although according to Urban Dictionary, this is how people from Ohio spell “indulge” …

Front page of the day. The front page of Sydney’s Daily Telegraph is, literally, an ad for Star Casino’s expansion plans. We imagine Crown chairman James Packer is none too pleased …