Possibility of more redundancies at the Guardian; GNM losing £100,000 a day

Fifty editorial jobs needed to be cut at Guardian News&Media as part of an attempt to reduce costs by £10 million, it was announced in May this year. Now it looks like there could be more jobs at risk, as the managing director of Guardian News & Media, Tim Brooks, told staff in a memo posted on the Guardian’s intranet.

“We are looking at everything – literally everything – that we do, to see how we can economise, and we will do whatever we can to keep the impact on staff to a minimum. However, because the biggest portion of our costs is people’s salaries, we have to review staffing levels,” he said.

GNM was losing £100,000 a day – a rate that cannot be afforded by its parent company, Guardian Media Group, Brooks said.

• Guardian.co.uk: Current losses unsustainable, GNM managing director warns staff
• Telegraph.co.uk: Guardian staff told to expect redundancies

Similar posts:

• Nielsen Online makes host of UK and EMEA appointments
• Announcement of pay cut for Rusbridger and no bonus for McCall following NUJ comments
• Editorial redundancies at Archant Norfolk: UPDATED: 34 to go
• NUJ Release: Guardian must consult NUJ over pay freeze
• Major MEN changes ‘are designed to protect the business and its journalism for the future,’ says GMG Regional Media statement

Dan Mason: ‘Five things journalists should do now – before they face redundancy’

“I’ve seen both sides of the story,” writes Dan Mason, a former regional newspaper editor (Coventry Evening Telegraph and Birmingham Post) and most recently, managing editor of 12 weeklies in London.

His post looks at ‘five things journalists should do now – before they face the threat of redundancy’. “It’s a beginning more than an ending,” he writes.

Firstly, ‘understand the redundancy process clearly BEFORE it starts,’ he says.

Full post at this link…

Similar posts:

• MediaGuardian: Newsquest could face legal action over Glasgow redundancies
• Cameron calls for restraints on BBC’s commercial operations, supports local media
• CPJ: Journalist trials to begin in Iran; charges of ’sending pictures to enemy media’
• Ronkayela.com: This is not the end of your daily newspaper…
• Jon Slattery: UK regional press crisis: interviews with an ex-editor, reporter and manager

NYTimes.com: Interactive graphic – ‘bad news for newspapers’

A lovely graphic from NYTimes.com, showing the ‘bad news for newspapers’ in the US. Different coloured and sized circles show which parts of the US have been hardest hit when it comes to falling newspaper circulation. The larger the circle, the larger the circulation; the red circles indicate a circulation change of -20 per cent. Graphs at the bottom show advertising revenue of the largest public newspaper companies.

Follow link to see graphic…

Similar posts:

• The Awl: A graphic history of US newspaper circulation over two decades
• AdweekMedia’s US magazine ‘hot list’: Economist and Elle take top spots
• InPublishing survey: ‘Behind the turnover figures, the industry is essentially still in profit’
• Nick Denton: Gawker revenues up 45 per cent in first half of 2009
• WAN 2008: Print and online newspapers on the rise

Independent.co.uk: Does it matter that UK regional papers are in crisis?

A big question indeed from the Independent’s Ian Burrell. He takes a look at issues affecting the performance of UK regional press and presents the ‘for’ and ‘against’ views on whether the ‘crisis’ matters.

Have regionals ‘had their day’? “Not at all,” the article says, at one point. “An impressive 82 per cent of UK adults read local newspapers, a level of penetration matched by no other medium except television.”

Full story at this link…

Similar posts:

• Editor&Publisher: Canada’s print readership outperforms online newspapers
• Growing effect of online advertising in US, OPA study suggests
• NewspaperDeathWatch: Rounding up 2008 trends
• PewResearchCenter: “Many Americans wouldn’t care ‘a lot’ if local papers folded”
• Henry Porter: ‘The crisis in local news is not just about the business model’

TamesideAdvertiser.co.uk: Video report of MEN Media cuts

A video from TamesideAdvertiser.co.uk, reporting on the job cuts and changes at MEN Media, as reported here on Journalism.co.uk on Tuesday.

Full story at this link…

Similar posts:

• BBC Newsnight to report how large companies use media law to restrict information
• Mediabistro: Newseum makes second round of job cuts
• Deadline Hollywood Daily’s Nikki Finke: “I did not sell out”
• Guardian.co.uk: Rusbridger on open-source journalism
• Election traffic: WashingtonPost sees biggest jump but CNN leads

MediaGuardian: 20 compulsory redundancies at Independent

“Management at the Independent newspapers hit staff with about 20 compulsory redundancies yesterday, less than a week after the National Union of Journalists suspended industrial action,” MediaGuardian reports.

Full story at this link…

Similar posts:

• NUJ Release: Thousands of BBC journalists to strike over compulsory redundancy risk
• NUJ Release: Strike action halted at Trinity Mirror Birmingham titles
• NUJ Release: Mass meeting at FT after only 11 volunteer for redundancy
• NUJ Release: Ballot for action at Trinity Mirror Newcastle titles
• RBI staff vote against further industrial action

MediaGuardian: Manchester Evening News weekly offices to go – 150 jobs axed

“MEN Media, the publisher of the Manchester Evening News and 22 weeklies based in the north west, is closing all editorial offices of its weekly newspapers and axing 150 jobs,” reports MediaGuardian.

Production of the group’s weekly newspapers will be centralised in the MEN offices in Scott Place in central Manchester, the report continues.

Full story at this link…

Similar posts:

• MEN Media/NUJ update: 11 compulsory editorial redundancies; five jobs saved
• Letter to GMG Regional Media’s Mark Dodson from MEN NUJ chapel
• NUJ Release: Vote of no confidence in Scott Trust after regional cuts
• Major MEN changes ‘are designed to protect the business and its journalism for the future,’ says GMG Regional Media statement
• Reuters blogs: WSJ axes 50 jobs, creates new posts at New York ‘hub’

MediaGuardian: News International journalists get ready for job cuts

MediaGuardian reports that there will be ‘a series of editorial job cuts’ across News International’s tabloid and broadsheet newspapers in the next two weeks and that the group will ‘cut the rates it pays some agencies for stories’. News International refused to comment on the reports.

Full story at this link…

Similar posts:

• MediaGuardian: Guardian News&Media to cut ‘about 50′ editorial positions
• paidContent:UK: More cuts at Global Radio, online operations restructured
• RCFP: AP’s ‘hot news’ claim will go forward in court
• MediaGuardian: News Corp news outlets to share news and video
• Mediabistro: Newseum makes second round of job cuts

Covering media job cuts – staff facing redundancy speak online

Having set up a timeline dedicated to reporting on the sweeping job cuts affecting both senior and junior journalists alike, a trend is emerging for laid-off staff to use blogs, Twitter and other online sites and tools to capture their redundancy.

Reports such as Martin Gee’s set of Flickr images from his last day at the San Jose Mercury give a highly individual picture of how these cuts are being felt on a personal level beyond the redundancy figures and prediction stats.

In the summer, the Columbia Journalism Review started its ‘Parting Thoughts’ series, posting responses from journalists leaving the industry or facing redundancy.

At the Gannett Blog, former Gannett editor Jim Hopkins crowdsourced a blogpost of lay-offs by the publisher, listed by newspaper area – at time of writing redundancies at 72 of Gannett’s 85 US titles affected by the company’s latest round of job cuts were accounted for in Hopkins’ post.

In an open blog post last week, Ryan Carson, co-founder of web application design and events agency Carsonified, used the company’s blog to share his thoughts about staff cuts and give the reasons for making them.

Carson went on to give tips for companies looking to recession-proof their business (points that some commenters on the post argue are common sense no matter what the economic situation).

The Spokesman-Review has used its Daily Briefing blog to cover staff leaving in an equally personal and open way. News of senior staff exiting the paper, such as editor Steve Smith and assistant managing editor Carla Savalli, was broken on the blog and posts have also been penned by outgoing journalists, including Thuy Dzuong:

“Folks, it’s been fun but The layoff list for non-managers has been finalized, and I’m on it.”

Last week Silicon Alley Insider built a ‘real time’-style page to cover lay-offs at parent company Yahoo, updating it as new info came in.

(UPDATE – The Rocky Mountain News has launched iwantmyrocky.com to canvas support for the newspaper)

Despite the sad circumstances, the way in which journalists and media workers are facing redundancy in these examples shows a real engagement with online tools. A personal picture of what is happening to the industry is being documented for future reference by these staff members expressing themselves so openly (and perhaps significantly being ‘allowed’ to express themselves by their past/present employers).

What is more, while they may not hold the answers to the problems currently faced by the media industry, they shed light on how these issues are perceived and felt on the frontline. Something which employers should read and learn from.

Similar posts:

• LAObserved: Open plea to Rupert Murdoch from senior editor at Fox 11
• Calling all young journos: Welcome to Tomorrow’s News, Tomorrow’s Journalists
• BNONews.com: NYTimes to cut 100 from newsroom
• MediaGuardian: Newsquest could face legal action over Glasgow redundancies
• Editor&Publisher: House-swaps for furloughs

Real-time job cuts with a live Yhoo from Silicon Alley Insider

Silicon Alley Insider, who admit they could be included in a downsize, have this handy feature for tracking the Yahoo job cuts as they happen.

It’s a live y’hoo to Yahoo employees, as more announcments are made. It brings together blog posts, Tweets and memos in the same way they covered the AOL layoffs last year.

Similar posts:

• CNN takes control of CNNbrk Twitter account with nearly 1m followers
• The Business Insider: Is the party over for MediaBistro?
• Business Insider: Chart of the Day – 24% of US newspapers don’t use digital delivery platforms
• Gannett Blog: ‘Why I’m shutting down this blog’
• US elections: the best of the rest on the web