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Newspaper office to close after 110 years

A weekly paper which has been produced from the same office since Queen Victoria was on the throne is closing its base there at the end of this month.

The Bucks Examiner first moved into its offices at 16 Germain Street, Chesham, in 1899.

Now publishers Trinity Mirror Southern have announced the office is to close on 29 May.

In future the paper’s staff will mainly work remotely, but will be able to “hot-desk” at the Uxbridge base of sister title the Uxbridge Gazette.

The Chesham office closure is the third to take place in Trinity’s West London and Bucks Division over recent months.

Earlier this year, the company announced it was also closing its offices in Ealing and Rickmansworth.

The Examiner’s multimedia content manager Shujaul Azam said: “This is an extremely sad time and unavoidable consequence of the economic situation we find ourselves in.

“However, I am confident our reporters will still be able to serve the community and will, in practice, be in the community more frequently than when they were office bound.

He added: “Contrary to rumours circulating, the paper is definitely not closing and we are determined to work hard to make it bigger and better than ever.”

There will be no journalist job losses as a result of the closure, but Pat Coulson, office manager at Chesham for the past 21 years, will be leaving when it closes.

Comments

Robert Bilge (18/05/2009 10:10:17)
What is ‘hot desking’ please?
Do they get their own desk or do they have to use someone else’s?

Mr_Osato (18/05/2009 10:18:40)
and what the hell is a multimedia content manager when its at home?

norman stevens (18/05/2009 10:26:53)
how on earth can they be ‘on the patch more often’ when they will be working from somewhere else? and since when has west London and Bucks
has any logical symbiosis? Someone senior at Trinity needs to go and buy a compass

Coolio (18/05/2009 11:07:22)
The group’s nearest office to Chesham is at Chalfont St Peter. Or is this being shut, too ? As for no journalists losing their jobs, I understand a 52 year-old veteran journo left Chesham to ‘pursue other interests’ at the end of March. I doubt he would have gone voluntarily at his age.

inquirer (18/05/2009 11:32:32)
‘Multimedia content manager’ ?Until recently, Julie Voyce was editor of both the Examiner and Advertiser (based at Chesham and Chalfont St Peter)Has she left to ‘pursue other interests’ as well ? Seems very cloak and dagger by Trinity Mirror Southern. The full story of these cuts has not been revealed.

FAST WOMAN (18/05/2009 12:03:22)
Making some sense of this Brave New World:
The Chesham office closure follows on from a Trinity Southern restructure at end of March when approx 20 editorial jobs went.
This particular closure doesn’t involve any further job losses because enough reporters, subs, sports editors, photographers and editors snapped up voluntary redundancy offers then, mainly in West London. The editor of the Bucks Examiner and Bucks Advertiser left at this time.
All remaining Trinity Southern reporters, now called multimedia journalists, are expected to work from home, coffee shops, libraries etc.
They can visit banks of shared desks at offices in Uxbridge snd Hounslow if they wish.
All traditional editor and news editor posts disappeared in the restructure.
Three ‘multimedia content managers’ now oversee all reporters across Bucks, West London, and in Surrey.
Subbing has also been ‘rebranded’ with the opening of a production hub at Chertsey, Surrey, where a bank of subs who survived the cull now produce all the Trinity Southern newspapers.
The remaining reporters and photographers file directly to Chertsey where their work is allocated to papers and/or websites.

Sarah Booker (18/05/2009 12:08:02)
As a former employee I’m sad to see the Chesham office go. I know how important it has been to the people of Chesham to have that point of contact in the centre of town. There was outrage when reporters were all moved to the NOW CLOSED Chalfont St Peter office. The company backtracked and split the team between the two centres again.
Now there are no Examiner or Buckinghamshire Advertiser reporters based in the county.
A sad day.

hilary jones (18/05/2009 15:52:20)
Quite apart from the loss of local coverage, I dread to think what a store of back and neck problems is going to be built up by these future hot deskers. There’s nothing more uncomfortable that constantly having to sit at a series of desks that don’t ‘fit’ you – and nothing more guaranteed to wreck equipment of all sorts than to have it regularly used by lots of different people. As well as saving costs in other more tangible ways companies are clearly trying to avoid having to look after their staff’s physical wellbeing.

Nicola Orchard (18/05/2009 17:02:07)
My first job in journalism was on the Buckinghamshire Advertiser and Examiner, and I have fond memories of working at the Chesham office. It was in the centre of the town, and we got many stories from people just popping in to say hello to Pat and other staff who really were part of the town. It was a friendly little office, and it will be very sad to see it close.

Young journo (18/05/2009 21:44:30)
I wonder how long it will be before some bright spark decides the best way to run a local newspaper is – shock horror – on a local basis.
But interestingly I would like to know where Hold the Front page picked this up from. I rather feel it lifted the page lead done in the Examiner and Advertiser by one of the journalists rather than doing any reporting of its own.