Trinity Mirror’s newspaper titles in the North East are being consolidated through the appointment of a new regional operations director, Ian Swain (pictured).

His role will be to manage the operations of Newcastle Chronicle and Journal Ltd, whose core titles include the Evening Chronicle, The Journal and the Sunday Sun, as well as Trinity Mirror’s Gazette Media Company, which produces the Middlesbrough Evening Gazette.

A company spokeswoman said: “His main responsibility will be to ensure the consistent, effective quality of production of the range of titles by developing all of the regional facilities and expertise to allow for investigation into new products and commercial and editorial initiatives.”

Mr Swain, who has worked at Middlesbrough for four years, said: “I’m delighted to have the opportunity to expand my role regionally. We have a great strength of resources and expertise here at the Trinity Mirror centres in the North East and my aim is to make sure that they are used to their full potential.”

The Newcastle and Middlesbrough centres together print over five million newspapers a week, including 1.85 million copies of the Daily Mail.

Mr Swain qualified as an accountant with Yorkshire Post Newspapers and has held operational posts within Northcliffe Newspapers and Reed Regional Newspapers (now Newsquest).

At Newcastle, he succeeds Ron Ellis, who joined News International.

Trinity Mirror has further strengthened its North East operations by appointing Jane Nugent as regional marketing director and says it will appoint a regional IT director during the next few months.

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