BBC/Milne Media: More than 100 jobs at risk in Scotsman print move

More than 100 jobs could go at Scotsman Publications’ Edinburgh printing plant as owners Johnston Press have decided to move operations to its Glasgow base.

The Scotsman and Scotland on Sunday will no be printed at the Cardonald print works in Glasgow, owned by Trinity Mirror, while 40 other titles will be printed in Sunderland.

Full story at this link…

More background on the move at Milne Media.

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Scottish newspapers claw back advertising from council jobs site

According to a report late last week from allmediascotland, several Scottish news groups will carry local authority vacancies on their job sites once more, following a deal with recruitment site myjobscotland.gov.uk – recently set up by the Convention of Local Scottish Authorities (CoSLA).

Concerns have been raised by regional media groups over local authority sites such as CoSLA’s jobs site with news groups arguing that these sites stymie a traditional revenue stream for titles by taking away local government job listings.

The latest development seems to be a step towards addressing the problems of migrating classified advertising revenue online for both local authorities and news groups.

Scottish government plans to remove government listings and statutory notices in local newspapers – therefore further impacting on classified revenues, have also been criticised by the industry.

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AllMediaScotland: MPs release ‘Crisis in the Scottish Press’ report

The Scottish Affairs Committee today released its ‘Crisis in the Scottish Press’ report.

“A shift of local authority job adverts from newspapers to a dedicated website run by the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities has been recognised by MPs as a threat to the viability of Scottish newspapers,” reports All Media Scotland.

“(…) [C]oncerns also extend to a possible move away of local authority public notices to the internet, despite not everyone having access to the internet.”

Full story at this link…

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Milne Media: Opportunities in the Herald’s website merger

Shaun Milne sees the soon-to-be launched HeraldScotland site – a merger of the Herald and Sunday Herald websites – as a new opportunity: for design, for the papers to boost their audiences and for journalism graduates.

Full post at this link…

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allmediascotland: Herald and Sunday Herald to merge websites

Staff at the newly integrated Herald titles will see a website merger take place in the next few weeks. The Sunday Herald and Herald websites will come together to create www.heraldscotland.com. Similar plans were mooted as far back as October 2007 and major changes have taken place in the newspapers’ newsroom since Donald Martin took on a new editor-in-chief role.

Full article at this link…

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allmediascotland: Alex Massie joins Spectator as blogger

Former Scotland on Sunday assistant editor signed up by magazine to effectively replace Stephen Pollard, who left to edit the Jewish Chronicle.

Full story at this link…

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allmediascotland: Voluntary redundancies put on hold at Herald

Staff who had applied for voluntary redundancy packages, as part of a reorganisation of the group’s titles, are now being asked to reapply for other roles by management after talks with the National Union of Journalists (NUJ) broke down.

Full story at this link…

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Channel 4 (part 1): Station plans to focus more on regional content

Following up on yesterday’s Ofcom round-up, here are further reports from the House of Lords, where Channel 4 chief executive, Andy Duncan spoke at a Communications Committee hearing.

• Channel 4 is unlikely to move away from London in a bid to save money, although it is keen to expand its influence around the UK. London was the centre of the UK media industry, Andy Duncan explained to the committee. Savings made from any move were likely to be ‘negligible’ at best.

• Although Channel 4 is already active in places such as Glasgow, Duncan admitted the station had relatively little presence in Scotland and other parts of the UK, outside England.

• The station’s CEO said that they were adept at creating good quality ‘one-off’ shows. The challenge was to create more opportunities for ‘returning’ series based in the region.

• Certain Channel 4 IP, such as ‘Dispatches’ and ‘Cutting Edge’ already allow for the allocation of programming and resources focused in and around the country.

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allmediascotland: Herald Group agrees to voluntary redundancies

Following the National Union of Journalists’ (NUJ) submission of a list of applications for voluntary redundancy at the Scotland-based Newsquest Herald Group, all but one of the names were accepted, Allmediascotland.com reports.

Further names have now been added (which takes the total to just above 40) – and will be confirmed after a meeting between the newspaper and the NUJ on Thursday, according to Allmediascotland.

The successful applications include Ian Bruce, the defence correspondent at the Herald, and Alan Campbell, sports writer at the Sunday Herald. Full story...

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MSP raises issue of reduction in newspaper advertising by Scottish government and local councils

A debate in Scottish Parliament raised MSPs’ concerns with the manner in which Herald group journalists have been made redundant and forced to reapply for their jobs.

MSP Ted Brocklebank raised some additional concerns: he has asked written questions about the amount that is spent by the Scottish Government on local and national press advertising per annum, and requested similar figures from the councils.

Answers could reveal the threat to newspapers resulting from the rise in government and councils placing advertising online (via Jon Slattery’s blog).

Journalism.co.uk hopes to update on the story next week.

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