Newsquest South London: new four-day strike announced

Journalists at Newsquest titles in South London will go on strike for four days next week, from Monday 27 to Thursday 30 June.

The announcement follows a two-day strike last week. Staff are in dispute with the publisher over plans for a reduction in editorial space, redundancies across all sections of editorial, a review of a two per cent pay rise and an office relocation.

NUJ mother of chapel Thais Portillo-Shrimpton said today that staff had not heard from management since last week’s strike.

NUJ negotiator Jenny Lennox said: “We’ve had a very successful two-day strike last week, and it is worth noting that a dozen journalists have joined the union since dispute began. This reflects the deep anger of journalists employed by Newsquest at their bosses’ determination to avoid consulting with staff on the future of their papers.”

At the end of May, union members Newsquest titles in the area, which covers Surrey, Sutton and Twickenham, voted almost unanimously for strike action, with 22 out of 23 returns of a ballot in favour.

Staff have also been working to rule since 15 April.

Earlier in May the company announced 12 job cuts at a series of titles in the area, including the loss of the sports and leisure department at one of the South London offices.

Staff are running a strike blog which can be found at this link.

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#Tip of the day from Journalism.co.uk – how to negotiate freelance pay

Never be the first to mention a figure when negotiating freelance pay. That’s the advice of Joanne Mallon, a freelance journalist and specialist career coach for people in media who gave a talk at a National Union of Journalists meeting in Brighton last night.

“Avoid mentioning a rate even if you’re asked,” she said. “Tell them you don’t have a set rate and ask what their budget is.”

Her advice is to “use quite neutral language” and discuss money as an “object in the room”. Avoid asking “what are you going to pay me?”

If you are locked in stalemate in a conversation with a commissioning editor, give a range of rates, she advised. “Don’t be afraid to say no” if the pay is too low.

“Ask questions to establish yourself as a confident person,” she suggested.

Tipster: Sarah Marshall.

To submit a tip to Journalism.co.uk, use this link – we will pay a fiver for the best ones published.

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Newsquest staff to vote on strike action over ‘subbing hub’

Nearly 80 Newsquest journalists are to vote on whether to take strike action in protest over plans to axe 14 subbing jobs in Darlington and York.

Newsquest plans to create a subbing hub in Bradford, which is 70 miles from Darlington, where the production of the weekly papers will take place.

The sub-editing of the dailies, the Northern Echo in Darlington and the Press in York, will remain at the existing locations.

Four jobs will be created in Bradford as subbing operations move during the next six months.

Members of the National Union of Journalists at Darlington, Durham, Northallerton, Bishop Auckland and York will take part in the ballot, which closes on 3 May.

“Newsquest needs to convince us, their staff and in all probability themselves, that this plan can work but management has shied away from that debate. At some point Newsquest will have to stop the cuts and start taking all their staff with them – in all senses of the words,” NUJ northern and midlands organiser Chris Morley said in a statement.

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London protest planned in support of journalists imprisoned in Libya

A protest will take place on Thursday in support of three Al Jazeera journalists captured in Libya in March.

A video on Al Jazeera English’s YouTube channel says Ahmad val ould Eddin and cameramen Ammar Al-Hamdan and Kamel Al Tallou are being held illegally.

According to this article on Al Jazeera’s website, the three were held near Zintan in the northwest of the country and then imprisoned in Tripoli. The broadcaster says it has no information on why the trio are being held.

The National Union of Journalists is joining the protest, which will take place between noon and 4pm in front of the Libyan Embassy in Knightsbridge, London.

“We are demonstrating in support of our Al Jazeera colleagues because it is vital to their safety that attention is focused on their plight at a time when the enormity of events in Libya might cause them to be forgotten,” NUJ general secretary Jeremy Dear said in a statement.

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BBC must not hand over material from demo, says NUJ

The National Union of Journalists is urging the BBC to safeguard material, including footage, gathered during the demonstration against spending cut on 26 March.

According to the NUJ, a number of BBC journalists have received emails regarding police attempts to secure un-broadcast journalistic material from the demonstration. “At this stage it appears to be a police ‘fishing trip’ seeking all material,” said NUJ secretary general Jeremy Dear in a statement.

The NUJ has written to the BBC to ask for “assurance the BBC will ask that the police follow proper procedures and seek to secure a court order if they wish to obtain any journalistic material in the possession of the BBC or its employees”.

Writing shortly after protests against rising tuition fees, photographer and blogger Mark Vallée had this advice on protecting journalistic material.

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Linguistics student’s live blog of march against spending cuts

Hundreds of journalists joined Saturday’s march against spending cuts, according to the National Union of Journalists, with reporters and citizen journalists out in force to cover the largely peaceful demonstration.

One of those reporters was first year linguistics student Matthew Taylor, who set up a new website and live blog to gather Tweets from student journalists on the ground.

Independent student journalism site Elephant, which launched 12 hours before the march began, recorded 1,000 unique users on the day, with around 75 followers online at any one time.

Taylor, a 20-year-old student at Queen Mary University of London, created the site using ScribbleLive’s live blogging platform. Taylor said he wanted immediacy and accountability for the tweets included in the blog and by using the software he was able to use approve Tweets through a student editor.

Armed with an SLR camera, a netbook and phone, Taylor was one of around 15 students reporting for Elephant. The site’s editor, who was also watching out for new information on the UK Uncut blog updated by members of the protest group and rolling news channels, curated and checked tweets for use on Elephant with a delay of “maybe a minute”.

“We were second only to television as the fastest visual report on the day,” Taylor claimed.

He said he is now providing feedback to ScribbleLive as to ways the company can improve the distinction between comments from the public and contributions from journalists in a live blog.

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#jpod: NUJ stages protest against BBC World Service cutbacks

The BBC broke the news this week that around 650 jobs at the World Service are to be cut by 2014, as the broadcaster seeks to make savings of 16 per cent following a cut in government funding.

The news followed the announcement of cuts in other areas of the BBC, such as BBC Monitoring, which announced it was to cut more than 50 jobs, and BBC Online, which is set to lose 360.

Emotions were running high at the World Service yesterday following the latest announcement. The changes proposed, which include the closure of five full language services and radio programming in seven languages, will also mean the loss of 30 million of the broadcaster’s listeners.

After the proposed changes were outlined in a press conference at the BBC World Service, members of the National Union of Journalists staged a protest demonstrating against the cuts to staff and services.

The union’s general secretary Jeremy Dear said the campaign would not rest until the cuts are overturned.

Listen below for Journalism.co.uk’s #jpod of the day’s events:

Podcast: Download

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‘Hope will be denied to millions of our listeners’: World Service staff protest against cuts

Our reporter Rachel McAthy is at the protests outside the BBC World Service offices this afternoon. Members of the National Union of Journalists are demonstrating against budget cuts announced today at the service which will result in the loss of 650 jobs as well as the closure of numerous language services.

Listen below to Mike Workman, the chair of the BBC World Service branch of the NUJ, speaking at the protest:

More to follow…

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Newsquest: An update on the reported pay freeze thaw

There have been several reports this week that a long-standing, group-wide pay freeze at Newsquest has shown signs of thawing. Journalism.co.uk has reported extensively on the National Union of Journalists’ (NUJ) campaign against the pay freeze and the series of strikes that have taken place at Newsquest titles in the past few months.

So has the pay freeze been lifted? Unfortunately, it’s not as straightforward as that. Here’s what we know:

• An NUJ update and official has confirmed that a 2 per cent pay increase has been offered at some Newsquest centres;
• The centres that have been confirmed so far are Bradford, York and Darlington;
• The NUJ has not yet returned our calls to confirm what centres, if any, in the south or Scotland have been made an offer;
• Journalism.co.uk has learned that in the current offers, no move to backdating pay has been included;
• The date from which a pay increase would take place – if the offers are accepted – depends on each centre’s “pay anniversary”, a date agreed between NUJ chapels and management when new pay or holiday settlements would be introduced.

A step in the right direction – but there’s more to come on this story…

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