“I’ve seen both sides of the story,” writes Dan Mason, a former regional newspaper editor (Coventry Evening Telegraph and Birmingham Post) and most recently, managing editor of 12 weeklies in London.
His post looks at ‘five things journalists should do now – before they face the threat of redundancy’. “It’s a beginning more than an ending,” he writes.
Firstly, ‘understand the redundancy process clearly BEFORE it starts,’ he says.
From 10.40 am today (Friday) the shadow chancellor will be taking live questions from BirminghamPost.net users.
“We think it might be the most senior politician to use the Cover It Live software…” Birmingham Post editor Marc Reeves told Journalism.co.uk.
The CoverItLive page can be found at this link and it’s open for questions now.
Mr Justice Eady was called in to rule on a libel case involving the great grandson of author JRR Tolkien.
Royd Tolkien had allegedly left defamatory comments on the website of Christopher Carrie, who claims he was abused by the son of JRR Tolkien.
The case was thrown out after Eady pointed out that Carrie could have removed the allegedly defamatory comments as they were left on his website.
Trinity Mirror regional titles, Newcastle’s Journal, the Birmingham Post and the Liverpool Post have joined forces to report on the economic situation on this live blog, happening right now, as we type this post.
It’s charting the falling FTSE share index and the Liverpool Daily Post reporter Alison Gow twittered this morning that it is the brainchild of Birmingham Post editor Marc Reeves and the head of regional multimedia David Higgerson.
Its purpose: “to provide live information on breaking news surrounding the banking crisis, as well as informed opinion from our team of experts across the country,” the administrator wrote at 12.19.
The poll shows that 63 per cent of voters think that yes, the government should offer 100 per cent protection on all savings.
At 14.23 Sion Barry of Media Wales writes that the length of of the recession ‘really is the golden question. Some sectors of the economy have been in recession from a while… just ask a housebuilder.’
The papers are using Coveritlive.com to create the blog.
According to the Guardian, all 300 editorial staff at Trinity Mirror’s Midlands titles have been made redundant and are being asked to reapply for new roles.
The mass restructuring of editorial staff will pave the way for the integration of multimedia, production and news desks across Trinity’s titles in the region.
A central multimedia desk will be created to take control of editorial content for the Birmingham Mail, Birmingham Post and Sunday Mercury with particular responsibility for online platforms.
A similar hub will be developed to produce content for its Coventry-based titles, while a regional production unit will oversee the multimedia desks’ work.
In addition a new work process of ‘content creation, multimedia desk, page finishing’ will be implemented.
Yesterday Trinity Mirror said the changes would require ‘substantially fewer journalists’ and the publisher has entered into a consultation process with the National Union of Journalists (NUJ).
“Whatever the company may claim, you simply can’t take dozens of journalists out of your local operations and continue to report news to the same standard. Bosses at the company are sacrificing quality journalism to appease the short-term whims of the financial markets,” said Jeremy Dear, NUJ general secretary, in response to yesterday’s announcement.
Trinity Mirror has announced a host of changes to the senior management of its Midlands newspaper titles.
Steve Dyson, who will remain in his post as editor of the Birmingham Mail, is to become additionally responsible for the Sunday Mercury.
He will also oversee the introduction of new centralised multimedia, newsroom and production operations to the region.
Marc Reeves, editor of the Birmingham Post, will take on new duties for the online development of Trinity’s titles in the area.
Dave Brookes, current editor of the Sunday Mercury, has been named as editor of the Coventry Telegraph and will take up the role in January replacing Alan Kirby, who will retire at Christmas.
Kirby and Brookes will remain as editor of their existing titles while the new processes are implemented.
Completing the changes Tony Lennox, editorial director of Midlands Weekly Media, has been appointed to the new role of business development editor for the Midlands.
Unique users to the Birmingham Post website rose by 72 per cent over the last month, according to the paper’s editor Marc Reeves.
Reeves released the figure for the period of March to April this year in a post to microblogging service Twitter.
The site’s relaunch in February gave the online edition more emphasis on breaking news throughout the day and increasing interaction between the site and readers.
In particular staff and readers have been encouraged to join the paper’s group of expert bloggers as part of a ‘web-first’ outlook.
Nicolas Kayser-Bril, contributor to the Online Journalism Blog and Observatoire des Media, has created an index of the interactive tools used by European news websites.
The index compares and contrasts which media organisations make use of tools such as Twitter, mobile alerts and social networks, as well as noting their policy on user registration for interactive services.
News sites from the UK and France, to Macedonia and Hungary are featured – entries for additional organisations should be submitted to nicolas@observatoiredesmedias.com.
Below is the index’s comparison of interactive features used by Sky’s site vs Guardian.co.uk:
The project is an extension of the work by Birmingham Post reporter and blogger Joanna Geary, who looked at the use of interactive tools by business news sites.
The Birmingham Post is to use microblogging service Twitter to push out the news feed from its website.
How did editor Marc Reeves announce the development? By Twitter of course.
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Earlier this week the Plymouth Herald began using the service to deliver customised messages to its readers.
UPDATE – The Post’s Twitter feed is now up and running, and will welcome feedback and comments from other Twitterers.