Editorial staff vote to walk off the job after rejecting annual pay increase of between 3 and 4 percent.

Journalists at some of Australia’s biggest newspapers have gone on strike on the eve of the Paris Olympics after management knocked back their demands for higher pay.

Editorial staff at Nine Entertainment, which owns The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, The Australian Financial Review, the Brisbane Times and WAtoday, stopped working at 11am on Friday, hours before the opening ceremony of the 33rd Olympic Games.

In Melbourne, journalists picketed outside The Age newspaper while wearing T-shirts and waving placards emblazoned with the slogan: “Don’t torch journalism.”

The walkout comes after staff voted to reject annual pay increases of between 3 and 4 percent over the next three years on the basis that the offer did not keep pace with rising living costs.

“We want a pay rise in line with CPI, a commitment to workplace diversity, safeguards around AI and a fair deal for freelancers,” the Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance said in a post on X.

Nine Entertainment, which also owns Nine Network television and Nine Radio, is the official broadcaster of the games and has sent about 200 staff to Paris to cover the competition.

Like other countries, Australia has seen its media landscape devastated by successive rounds of job cuts in recent years amid plunging advertising revenues.

Nine Entertainment said last month that it would let go of up to 200 employees, weeks after rivals News Ltd and Seven West Media announced redundancies.