A letter from the Manchester Evening News National Union of Journalists chapel to GMG Regional Media chief executive, Mark Dodson, following yesterday’s announcements.

Dear Mark,

At a lengthy and very well-attended MEN NUJ Chapel meeting earlier today, members unanimously passed the following:

“The Chapel utterly condemns this week’s announcements of sweeping job at the MEN, our Greater Manchester weekly newspapers and the
group’s  publications in Surrey and Berkshire and believes they  will have a devastating effect on local democracy and regional journalism.

We also condemn the redundancies inflicted on other sectors of our business.

The Chapel rejects absolutely any compulsory journalistic redundancies, which are especially unpalatable at a time when the organisation is still making a profit. The total number of proposed redundancies is unjustifiable and unsustainable. We demand an early explanation of how you envisage a future MEN/weeklies newsroom will work.

Management should be under no illusion that we stand shoulder-to-shoulder with our colleagues. We will be meeting again shortly to discuss our next steps.

However, since it is clear that these executive decisions have been demanded by the GMG board and sanctioned by the Scott Trust, we request that Dame Liz Forgan and her fellow trustees come to Manchester as soon as possible to speak to us.”

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Following the news that 150 jobs – 78 of those journalists’ – will be cut in GMG Regional Media, this statement has been released from the group:

“MEN Media, publisher of the Manchester Evening News and weekly titles across Greater Manchester, has today briefed staff on a range of proposed changes to the business.

“The local and regional press is facing the worst conditions in living memory as the economic downturn exacerbates and accelerates longer-term structural changes in the behaviour of advertisers and readers.

“The viability of local and regional titles is under threat due to steeply falling revenues that we do not expect to return to previous levels even when economic conditions improve. Publishers therefore need to find a sustainable new model if they are to survive.

“The major changes announced at MEN Media today are designed to protect the business and its journalism for the future through a new model with significantly lower fixed costs.

“By far the largest cost within the business is salaries, and while we have examined every option short of job losses, it has become clear that it is impossible to bring stability to MEN Media without substantially reducing the number of people we employ. We expect approximately 150 positions to be made redundant across MEN Media.

“While we will seek volunteers for redundancy wherever possible, we anticipate that compulsory redundancies will be unavoidable. Those people affected will be offered significantly enhanced severance terms.

“MEN Media has reviewed all aspects of its business. In addition to salaries, we have targeted various other costs and looked at how we can
improve in areas such as advertising sales, working practices and editorial systems.

“The proposed changes announced today are summarised below:

• Approximately 150 positions across all functions and disciplines to be made redundant within MEN Media. This includes 78 journalists across 23 titles.

• One consolidated editorial team for the MEN and weeklies at Scott Place in Manchester, working across MEN Media’s various titles and websites.

• All branch offices apart from Stockport will be closed in the coming months. Offices in Accrington, Ashton, Macclesfield, Oldham, Rochdale, Rossendale, Salford and Wilmslow will be closed.

• Reporters will continue to work their patches, but no longer from a local office. There will be increased remote working to support this.

• Investment in a new editorial system common to all titles, and training for all users. The new system has improved web and multimedia capabilities, and will enable journalists to work across MEN Media’s different outlets.

• New layout and design for weekly titles.

• Central section of common pages for the weeklies, drawn from the MEN’s leisure/entertainment content.

• Greater sharing of content between the MEN and weekly titles.

• A new house agreement to cover the new editorial department.

• A revised pay schedule for journalists based on the current weeklies pay schedule. Journalists who are paid in excess of the schedule will have their pay ring-fenced and protected.

• Fewer free copies of the MEN and weekly titles distributed.

• Reduced pagination of the MEN.

• Revamped advertising sales operation with greater focus on growing new business and selling multimedia solutions.

• Better targeted advertising sales strategies, with improved use of customer data.”

Mark Dodson, chief executive of GMG Regional Media (parent company of MEN Media), said:

“MEN Media’s role is to produce great journalism for our readers, users and viewers in Greater Manchester. If we want to continue to be able to do this, we need to find a new, sustainable, lower-cost business model to support it. The economic viability of local and regional newspapers is under very real and imminent threat.

“The decision about job losses has been a very difficult one to make, and I deeply regret that it has been necessary. Nonetheless, I do believe this is the right decision for MEN Media’s future and for the majority of staff who will remain with the company.

“There is a successful future for local and regional journalism in the commercial sector, but we need to protect our businesses now to give ourselves the best chance of reaching it.

“This is a worrying time for everyone working in the local and regional press. Some argue that our industry has no future. I think this is completely wrong – people still want local and regional journalism, and advertisers want to reach those people.”

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As part of tomorrow’s today’s National Council for the Training of Journalists (NCTJ) skills conference in Manchester, delegates from the event were yesterday treated to a tour of the Manchester Evening News‘ newsroom.

Journalism.co.uk is much obliged to MEN’s Sarah Hartley for the slideshow of the tour below, which appeared originally on the paper’s The Mancunian Way blog:

As part of the tour, MEN editor Paul Horrocks explained how the newsroom has helped teams from the group’s daily and weekly titles – and Channel M staff – integrate:

Her Twitter coverage of the tour can be seen on @foodiesarah @sarah_hartley.

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As reported on the main page, Sir Christopher Meyer will tonight urge publications to support the Press Complaints Commission (PCC) in its role, which he emphasises is still relevant in light of online developments and recent privacy issues. Here is his speech in full, courtesy of the PCC’s website:

“It is always a pleasure to be in Manchester – a city with a vibrant media which I have visited more than any other in England during my time chairing the PCC. It was in this very room five years ago that I launched the first of our Open Days: public meetings in the towns and cities of the UK aimed at making the PCC as accessible as possible. Then, as now, we were given all possible support by the Manchester Evening News and Paul Horrocks. One of the most respected and innovative editors in Britain, Paul was also an outstanding member of the PCC for four years.

It has always been my ambition to hold a full meeting of the PCC outside London. It is vital to get over the message that we are not a body shut away inside a metropolitan bubble, dealing with the complaints of celebrities, royals (and near-royals), and politicians. The reality is far different. We exist for all the citizens of the United Kingdom; and of the thousands who come to us for help and advice, over 90 per cent lay no claim to celebrity whatsoever.

So, tomorrow’s meeting of the PCC is an historic moment in the 17-year life of our organisation. My colleagues from the board, all/most of whom are present tonight, are the people who take the decisions under the Code of Practice: about where the public interest meets the individual’s right to privacy; what constitutes a significant inaccuracy; when payments for information can be made – in short, on how the UK’s newspapers and magazines should gather and report news in print and online.

The cases that come before us take us from the ethical heights to the nether regions of human existence. I leave it to you to decide in which category to put a recent privacy case involving the Manchester-based Daily Sport. When reporting the conviction of a man for having sex with a goat, the paper published a picture of the victim with its face blanked out – ‘out of respect for its private life’ as the caption said. Who says the tabloid press is out of control?

Tomorrow, when we meet at the City Inn, we will debate issues that are as important as they are topical. For example, how should self-regulation move forward when it must co-exist with a developing law on privacy; how do we exploit further the opportunities presented by the digitalisation of the media?

These are strategic challenges of the first order. They demand a long-term ambition, which must rise above the industry’s balance sheet, however dire the economic circumstances of the moment. This is because the PCC’s response to these challenges will to a large degree dictate whether self-regulation, as it has evolved since its creation in 1991, survives and prospers in its duty to the public. It is a duty for all seasons.

It will be for my successor, Peta Buscombe, who, I think, will be a terrific Chair, to lead the PCC through this exciting and testing time. But, without, I hope, treading on her toes, here are a few personal theses that I would like to nail to the doors of the Manchester Art Gallery.

Privacy has been much in the news lately because of a series of celebrity cases that have come before the courts. The PCC has itself just received a bunch of complaints from Heather Mills. Let’s be clear about one thing. There will never be an absolutely definitive ruling either by the judges or by the PCC that draws a universally applicable line between the private space and the public interest. Of course, the courts and the PCC make their decisions within the framework of their respective case law. But, in the end, it comes down to case-by-case; and a degree of subjectivity is unavoidable. That is why privacy cases, whether judged by the courts or the PCC, will be controversial till the end of time.

The Human Rights Act, of course, gets up the noses of a lot of people, and often rightly so. But it’s a fact of life. It is the basis on which the courts rule when the principles of privacy collide with those of press freedom. Even if the Act were abolished tomorrow, there would remain a corpus of decisions based on it that would remain in force. That includes decisions made by judges which, taken together, have changed the legal landscape and are seen by some as tantamount to a privacy law. That too is a fact of life.

Every now and again you hear cries and whispers, not a million miles away from the newspaper and magazine industry, that perhaps, after all, a privacy law debated and passed by parliament would be preferable to decisions taken by ‘unelected’ judges via the ‘backdoor’.  Well, beware of what you wish for. It may not be a full parliamentary debate; but the announcement last week of yet another hearing into privacy and related matters by the Select Committee on Culture, Media and Sport is the next best thing.

Some media lawyers will tell you that it is the courts which are making the running on privacy case law; and that the PCC is being shunted aside. Well, they would say that, wouldn’t they? There is a minority of lawyers who resent the competition, as they see it, from a body that provides its services free and fast, and in vastly more cases than ever come before the courts. But this is not a zero-sum game; there is a time for the law and a time for the PCC. And they ignore the sheer range of services we offer to those who fear unwarranted intrusion by the press.

One of the developments over the last few years of which I am most proud is our ‘anti-harassment’ service based on ‘desist messages’. People come to us to say that they are being door-stepped or chased down the street by photographers. We pass on messages to our private e-mail list of editors and lawyers up and down the country. We never tell editors in advance what they can and cannot publish – leaving this judgement to their own discretion. But, they know that, unless there is a clear public interest, or the individual concerned has promiscuously courted publicity in the past, they risk breaching the Code and its anti-harassment provisions. As a result, the harassment almost always stops; or the intrusive photo or story does not appear. There are some here tonight who have used the service.

To this preventative work – dealing with problems before publication – I should add the vast amount of stuff we do after publication: the negotiation of published and private apologies; undertakings about future conduct; removal of intrusive material from the internet; agreed follow-up pieces; tagging of archives with legal warnings to prevent repetition; even the arrangement of ex gratia payments occasionally. And we also have our powerful ‘name and shame’ sanction of a critical public admonishment, reproduced prominently and unedited in the offending publication.

We must be doing something right because when I retire next year demand for these services will have roughly doubled since 2003. This is thanks to the dedication and good judgement of Tim Toulmin, our Director, and his team. It is also thanks to the great majority of editors who willingly cooperate with us.

This is a record of which we can be proud. But here’s the rub. It’s not enough. As cases continue to come before the courts under the Human Rights Act, the law of confidence or privacy will continue to evolve. The explosion of online journalism, including moving images and sound on publication’s websites, places ever greater responsibility on the PCC to maintain standards. The government and the European Commission restlessly consider the wisdom and feasibility of regulating some types of internet content. A government minister referred only a few weeks ago to demanding more from self-regulation. Meanwhile, the current architecture of media content regulation in the UK – PCC, Ofcom, BBC Trust – looks increasingly unsustainable in the long term, as the frontiers which these organisations patrol dissolve under the pressure of media convergence.

Take all this together, and the challenge to the PCC and to the press is obvious. We must all raise our game. That means thinking creatively how, in this intensely fluid environment, self-regulation can deliver the goods more effectively. It is not divinely ordained that our system of regulation is here for all eternity. It has its enemies. There are other, competing models.

So, the aim must be to show beyond all doubt not only that the PCC’s model of independent regulation, with its unique ability rapidly to adjust to developments, is the one best suited for the age of on-line publishing; but that also, on matters of privacy, it is, in its mediation capacity, increasingly preferable to litigation.

This puts a huge responsibility on the press itself. The arrival of new-fangled digital platforms does not make respect for the old virtues redundant: fundamental attachment to accuracy, swift correction of mistakes, prominent publication of apologies, sensitivity to people’s grief, ready cooperation with the PCC’s investigations. By and large the press – national, regional, local – is pretty good at meeting these standards. But I have to say that, despite endless exhortation, the willingness of editors to give space to publicise the PCC’s services is patchy at best; and that includes publications represented on the Commission itself. That strikes me as an own goal.

The responsibility placed on the PCC is equally great. Tomorrow we will start turning our minds to these issues: issues that go the heart of our freedom of expression and of our democracy itself.”

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The Manchester Evening News has used free online tool Dipity to create an interactive timeline of the paper’s coverage of a proposed congestion charge for Greater Manchester.

The timeline features text and images from key dates in the ongoing story, dating back to January 10 2005.

The information can also be displayed and browsed by text-only, images-only or on a map.

The Liverpool Daily Post recently used the same online tool to create an interactive timeline for its diary of a day in Liverpool.

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The Guardian may be adopting strategies to make itself more Facebook-friendly but the lack of truly local geographical networks on the social networking site makes it more difficult for smaller papers to make great use of it.

The UK currently has 17 regional networks that users can become part of, here they are:

The regional networks, which unsurprisingly centre on larger towns and cities, offer reporters a great ‘in’ to the online community on their patch. A reporter working for the Manchester Evening News, for instance, or one of its smaller titles in the Greater Manchester area is at a distinct advantage over a reporter working on a paper in a smaller town:

Just a brief, cursory glance at the Manchester group throws up leads for several potential stories amongst its 500,000 plus members. The ‘See what’s popular’ feature and the discussion board make it a simple place to seed stories as well as one in which to ask for information and pick up leads. But where would you go if you lived in Burton on Trent?

Burton is a town in Staffordshire that – if you’ve defining it in terms of Facebook regions – is slap bang between Nottingham and West Midlands. Not much use then if you’re a reporter on the Burton Mail.

Burton has 103 groups related to it on Facebook – a lot of ground to cover for any hack – but like many other towns across the UK it has no network and Facebook doesn’t allow users to establish there own networks. Users have to make that request to the site:

If Facebook gave it’s users the ability to create these networks themselves it would solve a lot of headaches, but don’t expect that to happen in a hurry. So come on reporters on papers in Burton, Derby, Reading, Cardiff, Norwich and the like. Get a campaign going to get your town recognised as a network on Facebook. It can make the day job a hell of a lot simpler.

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Here’s a little moment of mirth from the closing session of the Society of Editors conference in Manchester.

During the Q&A session, Media Guardian reporter Jemima Kiss asked Telegraph editor Will Lewis about the transparency of ABCe ‘benchmarking’ monthly web traffic figures and if he was planning to again use Hitwise metric results in Telegraph advertising.

The website had previously run an ad on the homepage quoting Hitwise and proclaiming its position as the top quality UK newspaper online.

The Hitwise metric is considered by some to be an inferior measurement of a websites’ traffic than the figures supplied by Nielsen/NetRatings, comScore or the Audit Bureau of Circulations Electronic (ABCE).

A visibly riled Lewis told her that Telegraph marketing campaigns were ‘none of her business’ and that the Telegraph site stats were open for all to see on the site.

But what was it that riled him?

Was it the Guardian’s quest to have ABCEs recognised across the industry as the sole measure of websites metrics?

Having it rubbed in that according to this metric the Telegraph trails the Guardian by quite some way, almost in a polar opposite of the print edition?

Or was he tired of the puritanical zeal on this issue that encourages Guardian employees, it seems, to ask him a similar question every time he appears in public?

Listen here to the exchange:

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Adam Boulton, political editor of Sky News, and Liberty director Shami Chakrabarti both told the Society of Editors conference, in Manchester today, that self-regulation on the internet was a vital part of maintaining trust in major news brands.

Boulton told delegates that he believed the standards online of Sky, the BBC or any other major news provider should be as high as through its more traditional channels, and that this would help maintain audience trust.

Listen to him and Chakrabarti here:

Boulton wasn’t so keen on reader interaction though:

“Although there is a great deal of emphasis on interactivity now I would say that in my own experience not just on my own blog, but elsewhere, the comments by and large are not worth the paper they are printed on, or not printed on.

“They are extremely vicious and unpleasant, where they are useful is that they keep us honest in that they quickly pick up on our mistakes.”

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