Redundancies come after paper was bought in June by European media group Axel Springer

The new owners of the Daily Telegraph have made large numbers of staff redundant, telling them the title will be transformed from a newspaper “into a global, AI-powered premium media and intelligence business”.

In an all-company briefing and email on Friday morning, staff were told the title would rely increasingly on technology, data and AI to “reinvent the reader experience”. Newsroom insiders said they expected as many as 100 people to lose their jobs.

Exclusive: German media group Axel Springer said to be planning between 50 and 100 editorial redundancies

The new owner of the Telegraph is preparing to make significant job cuts to its newsroom, just months after stating it would invest in the title to make it the “leading centre-right media outlet in the English-speaking world”.

Axel Springer, the German media company overseen by its billionaire chief executive, Mathias Döpfner, is understood to be examining proposals that would make between 50 and 100 journalists redundant.

Recent instances of Nigel Farage’s party trying to gain sympathetic coverage lead to debate over reporting practices

The Telegraph and Reform UK are facing claims of undermining public interest journalism and eroding trust between reporters and politicians, after Nigel Farage’s party gave the newspaper stories first uncovered by other outlets.

It is understood there is unease among editorial staff at the Telegraph about Reform’s repeated use of the outlet for “spoilers”: a media tactic designed to pre-empt a problematic story by placing it with a title seen as more sympathetic.

At the Daily Mail, Paul Dacre broke new ground in selling readers an angry rightwing perspective. Today, most of Fleet Street is run by his disciples

In 1986, 131 years after the Daily Telegraph was founded, its editor, Max Hastings, wrote a memo to senior colleagues about the newspaper’s nature and purpose. “The Daily Telegraph is … ‘nice’,” he said, “in the business of reassurance, of providing confirmation each morning for our readers that their world is looking pretty safe and stable.” He went on: “We are not a strident campaigning newspaper – our business each day is to seek to give our readers the fullest possible information about what is happening in the world, and to suggest what it might mean.”

In practice, under Hastings and many other Telegraph editors, this ethos produced a journalism of pervasive but usually understated conservatism: often focused on the English countryside, the value of hierarchy and tradition, the pleasures of seasonal pursuits such as foxhunting and gardening, the interests of farmers and retired military men – and cautionary tales about more reckless lives gone wrong, often presented through enjoyably detailed reports from the divorce courts. The Torygraph, as many non-readers called it, could be inward-looking and “numbingly dull”, says Geoffrey Wheatcroft, the historian of British conservatism, but it was “thoroughly respectable”. Many of its most renowned figures, such as Hastings’s predecessor as editor, Bill Deedes, were “mildness itself”.

Axel Springer boss has ‘bold vision’ for the media group, but identifying a gap is no guarantee of stateside success

As he addressed staff at the London headquarters of the Telegraph Media Group last week, Mathias Döpfner, the German chief executive of Axel Springer and latest proprietor of the most traditional of conservative British newspapers, referred to his company’s decades-long pursuit of the venerable titles.

As staff nibbled Axel Springer-embossed biscuits, Döpfner also exchanged some distinctly European ribbing with the Daily Telegraph’s editor, Chris Evans, about Germany’s World Cup exit. However, it was clear to all that Döpfner’s ambitions for the titles were focused on another country and another continent.

Acquisition by Axel Springer ends three years of uncertainty over ownership of 171-year-old titles

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The European media group Axel Springer has completed its £575m takeover of the Telegraph, ending three tumultuous years of uncertainty over the future ownership of the 171-year-old titles.

The Germany-headquartered company, which gazumped the owner of the Daily Mail by tabling a blockbuster offer at the 11th hour, said it had now received all regulatory approvals in the UK, Ireland and Austria to take full control of Telegraph Media Group (TMG).

Sources say German group may struggle to recoup its investment as titles shift to less profitable models

Axel Springer did not complete due diligence on the Telegraph before sealing its £575m takeover, with sources saying the German media company could struggle to recoup its eye-watering investment as the titles shift toward less-profitable digital subscribers.

To wrap up the deal quickly, Mathias Döpfner, the chief executive of Axel Springer, decided to forgo the usual extensive due diligence process to vet the value and prospects of a company, according to multiple sources.

Lisa Nandy says there are no grounds to refer Axel Springer deal to Ofcom, ending almost three years of uncertainty for titles

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The culture secretary has cleared Axel Springer’s £575m takeover of the Telegraph, paving the way for the end of almost three years of uncertainty over the ownership of the titles.

Lisa Nandy said that she does not believe there are grounds to intervene and refer the deal to the media regulator, Ofcom, for an in-depth regulatory investigation.

After recent purchase of UK’s Daily Telegraph, Axel Springer and its ‘guru-like’ CEO, Mathias Döpfner, have sights on transatlantic expansion

In Mathias Döpfner’s 2023 book Dealing with Dictators, the chief executive of the German media company Axel Springer SE proposed a fix for western democracy: states that respect the rule of law should stick together and prioritise trading with each other. Better that, he declared, than indulging the illusion that doing business will tame “self-styled strongman leaders”.

So it came as quite the surprise when last month Hungary’s prime minister, Viktor Orbán, was given a prominent opinion article in Welt am Sonntag, less than four weeks before the riskiest elections of the rightwing populist’s career. “It caused a lot of strong irritation,” said a former editor at the Springer-owned broadsheet.

Daily Mail owner could take long-term hit after being gazumped at the 11th hour by Germany’s Axel Springer

The day after Lord Rothermere was gazumped in his pursuit of the Telegraph by Axel Springer’s £575m knockout offer, the Daily Mail owner was pictured beaming at Rupert Murdoch’s 95th birthday party in New York.

As guests at the star-studded black tie celebration at The Grill in Manhattan listened to Hollywood actor Hugh Jackman sing numbers such as Fly Me to the Moon, the 58-year-old media mogul may have been wondering how his almost three-decade dream to unite the titles within one right-leaning stable had fallen at the final hurdle.

Mathias Döpfner beat the Mail to seize a British institution. But whether he will be a sobering or malign influence is not yet clear

After fighting off one foreign takeover, staff at the paper that broke the news of the second world war might have been expected to react badly when meeting their potential new German owners on Monday. Instead, journalists at the Telegraph felt “optimistic”, “enthusiastic” and even “cautiously pleased” – one called a takeover by media conglomerate Axel Springer the “best possible outcome”.

The reason for this Panglossian response is partly hope that Axel Springer and its boss, Mathias Döpfner, might genuinely be keen on journalism, and partly exhaustion at the end of a wildly convoluted three-year takeover battle. The fight says a lot about the state of the print news business – upended by technological and economic headwinds yet still seen as an attractive bauble for rich power players and important as a home for journalism. For how much longer this persists could well depend on what Axel Springer and its part-owner and boss Döpfner do with it.

The Daily Mail owner has the Telegraph titles in his sights as part of a long-held ambition to create a dominant stable of rightwing newspapers

Waiting two decades for another chance to snaffle a prized business acquisition is a luxury not afforded to many executives. The Rothermere family, however, takes a more relaxed approach to time.

While most business boards draw up five-year plans, the Rothermeres, having compiled a feared media empire over more than a century, are used to thinking in terms of generations.