Trinity Mirror has announced a dramatic series of changes to the structure of their Midlands operation.
A centralised editorial “multimedia” hub in Birmingham and Coventry, covering the production of the Birmingham Post, Birmingham Evening Mail, Coventry Telegraph and Sunday Mercury. This approach has already been successfully established in other Trinity Mirror regional areas such as the Liverpool based NW2 and Cardiff Media Wales publishing centres. A new £7.5m web based CMS (content management system) for the newsroom called ContentWatch, which will enable repurposing of content across print and web media. One hub will be based at the existing Fort Dunlop press site. Editorial roles will be multi skilled which brings both opportunities for personal growth and unfortunately a period of uncertainty and stress for those involved.
There are potentially 65 redundancies in editorial as part of the restructuring as all three hundred existing editorial roles have been made redundant with staff to re apply for the new multi skilled roles, but with around 65 fewer posts available.
Disposal or possible closure of two paid for weekly titles in Long Eaton and four free weeklies serving the Northampton area.
The Birmingham Post will move from a six day broadsheet to a business focussed Monday to Friday tabloid. (JD 2007 Mon-Sat ABC: 12,549 copies, 3,543 distributed as free) .
Has a tipping point been reached for the traditional individual newsroom silos and token web integration?
To put it even more bluntly, the internet has contributed to falls in newspaper sales over the years, which means a revenue loss. While we’ve stemmed the level of this decline in recent years at the Mail and on the Sunday Mercury, the current economic climate has exacerbated the revenue loss in the form of less advertising.
I’ve seen the figures, and we can simply no longer afford to exist as sister Midland titles is silos (ie: with the Mail, The Birmingham Post and the Sunday Mercury, etc having their own management, writers and production departments working separately).
We have to share content, share production and cleverly approach management of titles’ planning so that we do this while at the same time maintaining brand values. That’s what our plan – referred to in the above link – intends to do.
Steve Dyson, Birmingham Mail editor, in his blog
MediaGuardian:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2008/aug/19/trinitymirror.pressandpublishing
Press Gazette:
http://www.pressgazette.co.uk/story.asp?sectioncode=1&storycode=41957&c=1
Hold The Front Page
http://www.holdthefrontpage.co.uk/news/080819shakeup.shtml
BBC News Online
2 Comments
August 20, 2008 at 9:03 pm
[...] I will post my thoughts a bit later, so if you want to leave some questions in the comments, I’ll try and answer them. Suffice to say there are some very interesting times ahead. – The Birmingham Post Editor, Marc Reeves, on the newspaper’s announced relaunch… – …and he also blogs about it. – Birmingham Post news story on the relaunch (we will update this during the day). – There are a few interesting comments appearing on Birmingham Mail editor Steve Dyson’s blog. – The Guardian’s report on the wider Trinity Mirror changes. – …and documents the NUJ’s reaction to the announcements. – The Guardian has now followed up with the story that we have all technically been made redundant. – Brand Republic report. – The Journalism.co.uk report on the Birmingham Post… – …and it’s report on the wider Midland announcement… – … and then on the change of roles for our editors. – Holdthefrontpage.co.uk focuses on the new roles for our editors. – … and the titles that are set to close… – … and has now done a report on the job losses. – Money invested and jobs lost lead in Press Gazette report on Trinity Mirror Midlands… – … and a focus on the new tabloid sized Birmingham Post. – The inaccurate corrected BBC report (it’s not The Post cutting 65 jobs, but TM Midlands) seems to miss many of the crucial details is here. – The Express and Star report. – Press Gazette’s The Wire does it’s own round-up. – Paul Groves gives his reaction to the announcement on his blog. – Rick Waghorn comments on the job losses. – Roy Greenslade says he understands why the changes are happening, although he takes no pleasure in it. – His blog seems to have inspired much of the content on the Editors Weblog. – They have also blogged about the Post changes. – Justin Williams, assitant editor of The Telegraph wonders if regional papers will outlive the NUJ after the announcements. – The NUJ’s official response. – The already infamous blog post from Nigel Hastilow. – Birmingham Post’s political editor Jonathan Walker’s blogs about the changes. – Jon Bounds offers a good local angle on The Post relaunch on Birmingham: It’s Not Shit. – Peter Morgan gives his summary on Info:node. [...]
October 31, 2008 at 9:19 pm
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