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.

• NUJ members ballot for strike at north-east Newsquest titles
• NUJ: More strife for Newsquest as four more NUJ centres vote to strike
• Northern Echo invests £10,000 in bid to ‘save’ Darlington Football Club
• NUJ Release: Newsquest to axe editor and 13 editorial jobs at Colchester Gazette
• Newsquest: An update on the reported pay freeze thaw

This is the fourth post in a series from an anonymous UK-based journalist recently made redundant. To follow the series, you can subscribe to this feed.

Last week I blogged about whether you should apply for subbing jobs if you’re a reporter or a features writer.

This week I’ve spoken to two journalists – one print and one online – about the ‘concertina effect,’ i.e. whether subbing and reporting roles are merging into one, particularly in an online environment.

Peter Sands is a veteran newspaper sub and director of PA Training and insists that the standalone sub is far from dead.

Even with web publishing where content goes live before it is subbed (meaning the reporter has to ensure copy is clean first), Sands says the role of the sub-editor is still vital.

“I would definitely say that you have to have a second pair of eyeballs,” he says.

Sands was editor of the Northern Echo in the early 1990s and admits much has changed since then.

At that time there was real animosity between subs and reporters: “In Darlington there was the Red Lion pub for subs and the Britannia for reporters and never the two should meet,” he says.

While Sands believes the sub is alive and kicking, he acknowledges that their role is being redefined. “The divide [between reporters and subs] has really gone now,” he says.

Sub, web editor and corporate blogger Fiona Cullinan agrees: “Divide?  What divide? The divide is less about reporting versus subbing and more about are you engaged or not, are you digitally included or not?”

“By not engaging more in online environments, traditional journalists are not developing their digital writing or subbing skills, let alone all the other skills that go with publishing to the web, like picture research under Creative Commons licences, image manipulation, linking skills, SEO knowledge, how to upload and promote content, and the big one: the ability to deal with readers talking back to you.”

Apart from the odd typo creeping in when you publish first and hone later, many reporters who write straight to the web can face serious libel issues.

Cullinan says checking factual inaccuracies and avoiding legal pitfalls is ‘perfect sub-editor territory‘.

“From what I’ve read, reporters in multimedia newsrooms are being asked to sub their own work; meanwhile subs are being made redundant,” she adds.

“How reporters are supposed to sub to old-school standards, perhaps with minimal experience or training, and 24-hour newsroom deadline pressures, should be interesting!”

Cullinan also points out that the comments section can act as a ‘rather more public second set of eyes, pointing out your typos and incorrect facts’.

The upshot? To keep up with the changing face of journalism a reporter needs to be savvy about subbing as well as having other web skills, but it is still the sub-editor who has the last word.

• Roy Greenslade: Response to criticisms of sub-editor comments
• The Jobless Journalist: Week five – Temporarily re-employed
• The Jobless Journalist: Week three – To sub or not to sub?
• Subbing debate continues on Radio4′s Media Show with Greenslade and Cathcart
• SoE08: Younger voices at the Society of Editors conference

In the latest (and possibly last) of the Reverend Mullen updates, the vicar apologises again over at his, no doubt more popular than usual, column in the Northern Echo. Some extracts:

• “I do believe The Evening Standard took my words out of context”

• “I number many homosexual men and women among my dearest friends”

• “What I do oppose – on the authority of the Christian faith – is the corrupting influence of the promotional parades of homosexuality by such as Gay Pride demonstrations.”

• “I was delighted to be so warmly welcomed at church last Sunday by the many homosexual people in my congregation.”

He quotes Sandy Toksvig as making the London Stock Exchange / buggery quip on the Radio 4 News Quiz, which I yesterday attributed to Rod Liddle in the Sunday Times… Maybe Liddle thought of it at exactly the same time as she did.

• The dangers of automated subbing…
• BBC head of religion and ethics disputes Sunday Telegraph article
• Why the Northern Echo will carry on employing Reverend Mullen
• Update: Le Carré’s past – as told on the web
• Le Carre-d away: has the author’s alleged desire to defect become fact?

Today the editor of the Northern Echo, Peter Barron, again addresses the issue of his controversial columnist the Reverend Peter Mullen.

Barron writes that he told Mullen that his comments on Mullen’s personal blog, which were extremely derogatory towards gay people, were ‘not funny’ and had placed Barron in a ‘difficult position’.

Today Barron writes:

“Should I go on employing someone as a columnist who had written such comments, albeit on a private blog which has nothing to do with The Northern Echo? I know there will be those who believe that the answer should be a resounding “no”.

The Northern Echo is a broad church, with columnists representing all shades of opinion.

Their views do not necessarily coincide with the views of the paper.

I do not always share Peter Mullen’s views.

But I regard him as a high quality, thought-provoking writer. His decision to remove the offending remarks from his website, and to issue an unreserved apology for causing offence, were essential steps if he were to continue writing for The Northern Echo. His column tomorrow will be an expression of regret.”

So Mullen keeps his column. But Mullen’s most notable position is not as a regional newspaper columnist. As Rod Liddle pointed out in yesterday’s Sunday Times, Mullen is also chaplain of the London Stock Exchange. Liddle wrote:

“Mullen’s principal worry is about the act of buggery – although he seems censorious about it only when it takes place between two consenting adults, rather than when it is applied without consent to the entire country.”

• Priest who wrote offensive comments about gay people on blog keeps newspaper column
• Reverend Peter Mullen’s apology: ‘Homosexual men and women among my dearest friends’
• Northern Echo invests £10,000 in bid to ‘save’ Darlington Football Club
• Podcast: Google meets online news publishers at the Frontline Club
• Darlington Councillor: Council newspapers and a ‘one-eyed’ local press

The vicar who faced national outrage after he posted offensive comments about gay people on his personal blog will continue writing for the Northern Echo newspaper.

The Rector of St Michael’s, Cornhill, in the City of London, and chaplain to the Stock Exchange, Peter Mullen, has been widely criticized for posts on his blog, including: a poem about gay marriage; a suggestion that proponents of gay culture should have a tattoo across their buttocks; and a call for Gay Pride parades to be outlawed.

Nonetheless the priest will continue to write his column for the Northern Echo, which can be read online.

The Northern Echo’s editor, Peter Barron, wrote on his own blog this week that he had advised Mullen to issue an apology to the Press Association, and that Mullen would be writing another apology in the Northern Echo next week, even though the original comments were not ever posted on the Northern Echo site.

Mullen has now deleted his blog but the offensive comments can be read in this Google cache (via Zefrog).

On a side note, if you now search priest + sodomy, on Google most the results return articles about Peter Mullen. Ironic, that.

• Why the Northern Echo will carry on employing Reverend Mullen
• Northern Echo invests £10,000 in bid to ‘save’ Darlington Football Club
• Darlington Councillor: Council newspapers and a ‘one-eyed’ local press
• Reverend Peter Mullen’s apology: ‘Homosexual men and women among my dearest friends’
• Testing times for Mail Online’s comment system