PaidContent (owned by Guardian News & Media) reports that Guardian America is laying off six ‘production/edit’ employees: “Most of them are in Guardian’s Washington DC office, and have been given three months notice. None of the U.S. correspondents are affected by this move.”
Last month paidContent reported GNM was to axe GuardianAmerica.com.
Twice recognised in the Online News Association’s (ONA) annual awards, Spanish news site Soitu.es has announced its closure.
Building an audience was not the issue – attracting advertisers to a new model was the problem, Gumersindo Lafuente, founder of the site, has said (in a post attracting 760 comments so far).
At 22-months-old, Soitu’s closure will be a blow/lesson to news start-ups and independent sites recently launched.
Associated Newspapers today announced that it is entering a period of consultation over the future of the London Lite, which could see the free evening publication close. Thirty-six London Lite employees will be consulted before a final decision is made, a statement said.
“The latest development in the London afternoon free newspaper space dictates that we look again at the future of London Lite. Despite reaching a large audience with an excellent editorial format, we are concerned about the commercial viability in this highly competitive area,” said Steve Auckland, managing director, Associated Newspapers Free Division.
In August, News International, the UK newspaper division of News Corporation announced that it would close thelondonpaper, its free evening newspaper launched in 2006.
UPDATE – Full report on changes at BPM Media now available on Journalism.co.uk.
Trinity Mirror has announced that Birmingham Mail editor Steve Dyson and Birmingham Post editor Marc Reeves will step down from their roles by the end of the year, as part of wider changes at BPM Media.
Dave Brookes, Coventry Telegraph editor, has been named as editor-in-chief across all BPM titles (Post, Mail, Telegraph and Sunday Mercury) and as editor of the Birmingham Mail.
The changes, which are the result of a consultation at Trinity’s Birmingham division, will include:
BNOnews has a letter from New York Times executive editor Bill Keller announcing that 100 newsroom positions will be cut at the title by the end of the year.
In the letter Keller says voluntary buyouts will be offered before any lay-offs are made.
The editor also points out that pay cuts, budget cuts and redundancies in other departments have been made to protect the newsroom from this eventuality so far.
“I won’t pretend that these staff cuts will not in some ways diminish our journalism, or that they will not add to the burdens of journalists whose responsibilities have grown faster than their compensation. But we’ve been looking hard at ways to minimise the impact – in part, by re-engineering some of our copy flow. I won’t promise this will be easy or painless, but I believe we can weather these cuts without seriously compromising our commitment to coverage of the region, the country and the world. We will remain the single best news organisation on earth,” he writes.
Four laid-off journalists have been recruited by the Columbia Journalism Review (CJR) as part of the industry publication’s new Encore Fellowship initiative to give redundant journalists more job opportunities.
According to the CJR, the journalists will work for CJR for nine months and receive support on using their experience in the future. Their work will be featured in both the magazine and the website, from late October.
The Encore initiative has been developed by Civic Ventures, a partner of the project. The Poynter Institute have also partnered CJR for this scheme and will provide educational opportunities tailored to the new journalists’ needs.
The Encore journalists were chosen from journalists who, because of the industry’s economic condition, have left jobs as senior reporters. Encore has received a grant from The Atlantic Philanthropies and hopes that new donors will help an expanded program to launch for 2010.
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A new survey asking laid-off journalists what happens after the newsroom, was launched today by the University of Central Lancashire (UCLAN) and Journalism.co.uk.
Journalists who have left newspapers in the UK are invited to contribute to the study, led by François Nel, who runs the Journalism Leaders Programme at UCLAN.
We want to know about your experiences of losing your job and how you have adapted in your personal and professional life since leaving the newspaper. We’re also considering the gap in knowledge and experience you have left behind.
The survey, which draws on work by colleagues in the US and the University of Kansas, is voluntary and confidential. Results cannot be attributed to a specific individual unless the individual chooses to reveal himself or herself. You also can refuse to answer any question. The survey will take 10 to 15 minutes to complete.
This is the sixth post in a series from an anonymous UK-based journalist recently made redundant. To follow the series, you can subscribe to this feed.
You can also read posts by our previous ‘Redundant Journalist’ blogger at this link.
The reason this post is late is because I’ve just finished filling in the BBC’s trainee scheme application form.
As anyone out there who has ever applied for one of these schemes will know – the forms are monsters.
The BBC’s was particularly time consuming and took me the best part of a week to complete. It’s the application questions that ask you to explain why you want a place on the scheme or to review a news bulletin that take a lot of thought.
The reason these forms can take so long is because you know how many people you’ll be up against. There’s no point in doing them at the last minute as you won’t do a good job.
A former blogger on this site, Amy Oliver, recently started on the Daily Mail’s trainee scheme.
As someone who has cracked the application process, I thought it would be useful to get her advice on the subject.
She says: “I felt, with the trainee scheme I applied to, my CV was crucial. I’d honed it beforehand.
“My absolute top tip for applying to any scheme would be to check out journalism forums for posts by people who have applied before. There is usually a reply from a person who works at the group giving advice.
“Determination is the key to any application. I applied once and got turned down. I applied a second time and got turned down, but then had to re-interview for a different position.
“I didn’t give up and neither should you. Follow up your application even if you get fobbed off by an HR person. Try and speak to someone about it. Get their feedback.
“Phone up the relevant person to get an idea of what you’re up against before you start filling in the form. Ask how many people usually apply, ask who got on it last year and try to get their details to speak to them.”
Was it all worth it? Amy thinks so: “It is absolutely worth applying for every trainee scheme going – even if you want to kill yourself by the end of it.
“If you get onto it, it’s a fantastic way of getting onto the ladder. In my experience you are nurtured and supported and will learn so much in such a short period of time.
“Never think, ‘I won’t bother applying for this because I won’t get it’. That road literally leads to nowhere.”
The news that Conde Nast is to close its specialist food magazine Gourmet is now official, after months of speculation that the title might be cut as part of the publishing house’s streamlining.
As a freelance journalist trying to carve a niche out for myself in food writing, the news has been (if you’ll pardon my pun) rather hard to swallow.
Of course I know that media, the way we consume media, and the way the media is funded is changing – and the internet revolution, the foodie blogosphere and twitter explosion are fast-usurping more traditional channels like print – but it still makes me sad.
I’m not alone, if the response on Twitter is anything to go by.
What hope is there for aspiring food journalists to ever make a living (or even a bit of their living) writing about our specialist subject if even the most famous of quality food publications, which has been going for 70 years is going to close?
We all know that steep drops in traditional forms of advertising forced the mag (like every other anorexic print publication around) to cut pages because of the shift from advertising to targeted online marketing, but what about the readers and writers?
We still exist – and now we’re left with a hole to fill. While I’m a fan of the online food content boom (I have a food blog myself) and I love its speed, relevance and interactivity, I still strongly believe that online content can’t fully replace magazines like Gourmet.
It was, as Jay Rayner says in his Guardian post about its closure: ‘The glossiest, the shiniest, the most indulgent’. The end of Gourmet is indicative of the general move toward free online content rather than investment in quality writing, and high spec, niche publications. Tim Hayward, Guardian columnist and food writer agrees, describing the move of the publishing house as ‘baffling’.
“Does it really mean that intelligent special interest reading isn’t valuable? If they can’t tap into market with a serious disposable income then what hope is there?” he asks.
Hayward, who is starting a printed food publication, http://www.fireandknives.com/, for exactly the readers and writers abandoned by Gourmet’s closure, highlights the gap in the market left by its passing. “It’s about the medium as much as the writing, about having the object there in front of you. Sitting down at the coffee table with it was slightly like pornography and you can’t claim that that can be replaced by online for that audience.
“The reason I’m starting Fire and Knives is because no one was talking to that group over here. Now that’s been corked – you’ve got to wonder what it’s going to mean for everyone else. With Fire and Knives I’m taking advertising out of the equation, which means it’s much easier to set up.
“We’ll still have to make money eventually – but it’s just figuring out where from. We’ll probably end up having to go down a sponsorship route.”
So does Gourmet’s closure really mark the end of an era for special interest reading?
As Hayward points out, it’s the structure of the traditional magazine, with its expensive advertising and sales departments that is dying, rather than the readers and writers and hunger for quality content.
But how can we get around that? Will new models emerge for print publications or is the future typing ‘luxurious chocolate cake’ into Google Images whenever we want our foodie fix?
Rosie Birkett is a freelance journalist specialising in food, travel and lifestyle writing.
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.