Tag Archives: Midland News Association

HtFP: Newspaper editor with MBE made redundant

John Butterworth, group editor of Shropshire Newspaper’s weekly series (part of the Midland News Association), was made redundant yesterday, according to HoldtheFrontPage’s Tamlyn Jones. The 55-year-old has a journalistic career spanning 36 years and was awarded an MBE a year ago for services to journalism and various charities. Full story…

Round-up of the recent UK newspaper job cuts

It’s hardly like newspaper jobs were all that secure anyway, but this month’s financial situation (something about a recession) hasn’t helped things either over the last couple of weeks.

This week news broke that two of the UK’s biggest-selling regional daily newspapers will cut 135 jobs.

The family run publishers Midland News Association are looking to merge their publications, the Express and Star and the Shropshire Star, with the aim of reducing costs by around £3 million a year.

After a decline in advertising revenue, the publishers considered it a necessary move, as reported over at the Guardian. There are plans to merge some parts of classified advertising, production and finance.

Press Gazette reported that despite the merger, both publications will maintain their individual identities, while also keeping separate editors and reporters.

  • At the beginning of last week we learnt that the Metro in Manchester will be axing ten jobs. It has since been announced that the jobs lost will be in editorial, sales and adminstration roles. The Liverpool office has been closed and relocated to Manchester.
  • Three of Trinity Mirror’s East Midlands publications ceased production last week, as reported over at Hold the Front Page: the 126-year-old Long Eaton Advertiser, The Nu News and The Long Eaton Trader. A distribution worker and 3 members of advertising were made redundant. Due to staff reassignments, no editorial job cuts were made.

Shropshire Star posts 59% rise in page impressions

The Shropshire Star recorded 1,630,103 page impressions in April, according to the latest figures from the Audit Bureau of Circulations Electronic (ABCe).

The figure rose by 59 per cent from the last audit of the site in November 2007 and 103 per cent year-on-year.
In April the site attracted 114,388 unique users – a 14 per cent increase over the five months from November.

On average the site recorded 6,942 unique users and 54,337 page impressions per day.

According to a release from publisher Midland News Association (MNA), the figures coincided with ‘a bumper harvest’ of user-generated content on the site following sudden snowfall in the county.