Journalism.co.uk Editors' Blog » job cuts

Job cuts at the London Evening Standard?

Judith Townend — Thu, 26 Nov 2009 11:19:05 +0000

This from Evening Standard city reporter Lucy Tobin on Twitter…

Update: the company’s spokesperson confirmed the changes and threatened jobs.

The Guardian has reported that up to 20 editorial and production jobs are at risk; when Journalism.co.uk asked the Standard to confirm the report, a spokesperson said a firm number could not be announced ‘at this stage’ and a consultation period is underway.

All 600,000 copies copies of the Standard – which became a free newspaper in October 2009 – will be printed later in the day ( the West End Final edition) from January.

“Printing will begin in the afternoon, with the latest developing stories being updated on the presses as they run until early evening,” a release said.

“The response to our recent decision to make the Evening Standard a free quality newspaper has been overwhelming,” said editor Geordie Greig. “This decision will mean our news is even more up to date, and more copies will be available for home-going commuters.”

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

Judith Townend — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 08:20:14 +0000

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

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

Judith Townend — Fri, 13 Mar 2009 14:36:17 +0000

“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…

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

Judith Townend — Fri, 13 Mar 2009 11:48:36 +0000

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…

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

Judith Townend — Fri, 13 Mar 2009 10:05:30 +0000

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…

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

Judith Townend — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 13:15:07 +0000

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…

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MediaGuardian: 20 compulsory redundancies at Independent

Judith Townend — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 09:51:21 +0000

“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…

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

Judith Townend — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 13:28:45 +0000

“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…

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MediaGuardian: News International journalists get ready for job cuts

Judith Townend — Fri, 30 Jan 2009 11:32:29 +0000

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…

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Covering media job cuts – staff facing redundancy speak online

Laura Oliver — Tue, 16 Dec 2008 12:34:07 +0000

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.

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