Responding to suggestions that 800 staff positions would be lost across News Limited publications in Australia, Mr Hartigan said: “That’s a ridiculous number to bandy around.”

The information came from crikey.com.au, which Mr Hartigan described as “not the most credible source going around”.

Just remind me, who is John Hartigan again? Oh yeah, the guy that publishes the febrile rantings of Andrew Bolt, Piers Ackerman and Janet Albrechtsen. A byword for credibility and incisive commentary: check this.

Anyway, we prefer to be thought of as ‘usually reliable’. And we’ll just keep an eye on the exits.

As head News honchos met today at the Sydney HQ word filtered off what might just be the target number for shedding across the Australian group. That number? Remember that Fairfax tapped 550 last year, and made a lot of noise about the 5% cut it to impress the market. Not that that worked!

News won’t be out their spruiking — swift, silent execution is more the house style — but the target number of cuts is said to be 800. That’s the goss this afternoon from Sydney agency land. The person you talked to last week, isn’t there this week. Sort of like a journalistic equivalent of Pinochet’s Chile.

Guess everyone wants to impress Rupert when he’s here next week.