Staff at Newsquest’s three Glasgow titles will ballot for strike action if the company attempt to push through compulsory redundancies. The company announced last week that it wanted to cut 40 jobs – 20 in editorial – at The Herald, Evening Times and Sunday Herald.
Staff are also said to be furious over the way the job cuts announcement was made. Ian Bruce, father of the NUJ chapel at The Herald, said: “The chapel has made it clear, if there is a move toward a single compulsory redundancy then we will automatically call for a ballot for industrial action.”

A newspaper’s free weekly magazine has proved so popular that copies are being sold eBay.
The Kent Messenger prints around 150,000 copies of its What’s On supplement to go inside its newspapers.
But the special issue marking Radio 1’s Big Weekend, in Maidstone, have flown off the shelves. The paper reports seeing the magazine, which features the headline singer Madonna on the cover, for sale at £3.99 on the auction website.

Staff from the Sheerness Times Guardian took part in a 24-hour Cancer Research ‘Relay for Life’ as part of Local Newspaper Week, when several staff and their families joined in the event on the Isle of Sheppey, under the team name News Hounds.
The event involves walking round a track continuously, tagging in with other team members. The whole event raised nearly £10,400.

Local campaigning groups are a growing social phenomenon, according to the authors of a new book. Jon Robins, an award-winning journalist from Brighton, and environmental law activist Paul Stookes, from Southborough, have published People Power.

The UK was ranked 25th in a league table of press freedom, with a rating of 18, according to this year’s annual Freedom of the Press index.
It is the same score as Canada, the Czech Republic and Lithuania but below Andorra, Ireland and Germany. Finland and Iceland are the countries with the greatest press freedom in the world.