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Three papers to close and 45 jobs to go at Trinity Mirror Midlands

More than 40 editorial jobs are set to go in the West Midlands in a fresh restructure by regional publisher Trinity Mirror.

The changes announced to staff at 2pm today will also see the closure of three free newspapers – the Chase Post, Stafford Post and Sutton News, which will each publish their final editions this week.

A regional production hub is to be created involving content editors from Trinity’s Birmingham and Coventry titles and a regional features unit introduced.

Some specialist reporting roles on different titles will also be merged in what managers say will mean “more effective sharing of resources across the region.”

Taken together the changes are expected to result in a reduction in editorial headcount of approximately 50 across the Midlands businesses, including seven on the three titles due to close.

However the proposals also call for the recruitment of an additional five full-time editorial roles, meaning the restructure will result in a total net reduction in editorial roles of 45.

The proposals also outline plans to restructure the advertising department by creating regional teams, operating across the Trinity Mirror Midlands region.
 
This is expected to result in a net reduction in advertising staff numbers of approximately 11, with a further ten advertsing  jobs to go on the three titles due to close.  A formal consulation process has begun.

The restructure has been carried out by new Trinity Mirror Midlands managing director, Steve Anderson-Dixon.

Said Steve: “This review of our organisational structure is vital if we are to ensure a future for our newspapers and websites in the Midlands.

“We all need to work more closely as a region and sharing key resources is a key theme in these proposals.
 
“These actions will result in a reduction in the number of roles at all levels, across a number of offices and departments and we have entered into a period of consultation with all affected staff.”

32 comments

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  • November 14, 2011 at 3:45 pm
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    Didn’t even have the courtesy to let the editors’ conference come to a close before sticking in their usual pre-Christmas knife.

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  • November 14, 2011 at 3:50 pm
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    OMG – this is already starting to look like the Northcliffe thinking – hubs etc!
    They tried this in the West Country – read previous postings re that ONE!!!! It’s really sad that they only seem to be able to regurgitate old (bad) ideas. What ever happened to “blue sky thinking”? Remember this is or was THE buzz phrase of only a few months ago. Oh how time flies ( I mean the spelling too).

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  • November 14, 2011 at 3:52 pm
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    The Sutton Coldfield News published its first edition on January 1, 1870.
    It is (now was) a great newspaper.
    I’ll try to get the sadness over with quickly, so I can move on to the more productive ‘angry’ phase.
    Just sorrow now, though.

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  • November 14, 2011 at 4:21 pm
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    Hold on … Steve A-D had no ideas other than chop, chop, chop at Northcliffe now he’s moved northwards where, guess what, he’s chop, chop, chopping again. Any ideas for growth, Steve??

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  • November 14, 2011 at 4:26 pm
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    Trinity Mirror are killing great titles in the Midlands. The Birmingham (Evening) Mail is a shadow of what it was. The Birmingham Post is shuffling along. The Sunday Mercury is blowing in the wind. The Coventry (Evening) Telegraph likewise . Rid them of more staff and centralise some more, sales and revenue will only go down further and an already totally demoralised staff will be queuing up to jump ship. What another sad, sad day and another disgusting set of cuts by a company with no feel whatsoever for these local titles and a business plan based on wielding the axe.

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  • November 14, 2011 at 5:10 pm
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    Really sad news indeed. I’m particularly feeling gutted for the editor of the Chase Post, Mike Lockley, who clocked up 25 years as editor last week. A newspaper man through and through

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  • November 14, 2011 at 5:22 pm
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    Absolutely shocking. A sad day for these titles, their communities and their reporters.

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  • November 14, 2011 at 6:05 pm
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    A very sad day and another nail in the coffin for regional newspapers.
    As “axemen cometh” rightly says, this will only result in poorer quality newspapers which, surprise surprise, will result in ever falling circulation and advertising revenues.
    And guess what will happen then? You’ve got it – another round of redundancies in the future. This will NOT safeguard the future of the titles – it will only have the opposite effect.
    I was one of those made redundant by TM a couple of years ago and really hoped that would have been the last cut.

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  • November 15, 2011 at 9:22 am
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    It’s a shocker – and all the top brass in editorial who might be held responsible for the poor performance of the Birmingham Mail and Sunday Mercury have all got off scott free.

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  • November 15, 2011 at 9:38 am
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    Interesting that two of these titles are no. 2’s to Northcliffe titles in their respective areas!

    However, I am a little surprised that the centralisation of production had not happened years ago with the move to the Fort and a new editorial system.

    What will be left of the business that Mirror bought from Chirs Oakley all those years ago. Precious little I fear.

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  • November 15, 2011 at 9:43 am
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    I don’t know Mike Lockley (used to work for the opposition) but I eagerly look/ed forward to reading the rag every week.

    It’s Framleysian wackiness would give an NCTJ examiner a hernia, but it’s a proper grassroots local paper, filled with real word-of-mouth human interest stories (despite only having one or possibly two reporters) and you can tell Lockley lives and breathes journalism. Just the other week, he risked life and limb by meeting up with a fugitive drug dealer who wasn’t best pleased with the way he’d been mocked in a previous week’s ‘big exclusive’. How many other hacks would do that these days, just to scoop the opposition and sell a few more copies that week?

    Not to mention that that particular story was one about a major and very public balls-up which was highly embarassing to the police, yet was completely missed by all other media in the area….

    Sorry to go on but it’s not as if the CP suffered from the same public apathy as other titles which have been axed – very much seen as ‘the’ local paper by its area, seemingly plenty of advertisers, and BMDs always full to bursting. If the closure was literally only announced to staff this week, it’s absolutely shameful.

    I only hope that if and when those behind this decision find themselves in the same boat, (honour among thieves and all that) they’re not given free rein on sites like this to waffle about how sad they are for the industry, how they would have done things differently, etc etc.

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  • November 15, 2011 at 10:15 am
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    Local newspapers – the coal industry of the 21st century, largely irrelevant nowadays. Some, with reporters embedded in the community, living and breathing their patch (a rarity), could still be saved, but not in an age of savage cutbacks where only the bottom line, and not the content, matters. The boardroom fatcats, worried only about the share price, have done for us, and will, in a very short time, kill the goose that laid the golden egg!

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  • November 15, 2011 at 10:56 am
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    Really shocked at this. Can’t speak for the other titles but the Chase Post is a healthy weekly with a very strong local following – it’s not as though it’s some struggling also-ran.
    Letters page always packed, loads of proper, word-of-mouth stories and a delightful absence of PR guff. Though his style is outrageously un-Oxdown, ed Mike Lockley has done a tremendous job over the 25 years he’s been there, despite the staffing being run down to just him and one or two reporters.
    Have a look at his piece reflecting on it all on the CP website…

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  • November 15, 2011 at 11:24 am
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    How sad to hear about the Sutton News. Thirty-eight years ago West Midlands Press editorial director Don Goggin offered me my first job in journalism on the Sutton Coldfield News with a starting salary of £24.38 per week. This summer I joined the ever-growing list of those made redundant from the provincial press.

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  • November 15, 2011 at 11:36 am
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    What really annoys me is the fact the Trinity Mirror are taking the p*** out of “consultation”. How can they be serious about this legal requirement when they are closing the papers this week. What chance for anyone who might have wanted to buy and therefore save the papers? Shameful.

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  • November 15, 2011 at 12:06 pm
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    It’s the run-up to Christmas and the journalistic turkeys are gathering for the festive ritual. Today Trinity … but if you work for any of the other big three publishers the message is clear: Hold on to your hats!

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  • November 15, 2011 at 12:08 pm
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    I too was on the Sutton News when Don Goggin was editor and Bob Warman was chief reporter who tried to ban laughing in the office. And I had the privilege of working briefly with Mike Lockley as a freelance sub and I it’s hard to recall a more likeable gaffer. Totally off the wall but a brilliant bloke who lived and breathed his job. I feel gutted for all the staff who will lose jobs at this time of year and hope they find employment soon. This shower at TM could not run a bath, never mind a company. I hope that what goes around comes around and you find yourselves out on your ear. Soon.

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  • November 15, 2011 at 12:28 pm
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    Poignant that the announcement was made on the anniversary of the Coventry Blitz. The jobs blitz in editorial in Coventry is a heavy handed swipe, virtually ending their photographic department. For such a picture lead paper it seems like a blind sighted attack by a bureaucrat who will never understand what makes a paper tick, and what the readers really want. If they want off-colour grainy mobile phone pics blown to pixelated smithereens in the paper, then, well, i’ll be quiet then. Carry on

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  • November 15, 2011 at 12:35 pm
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    someone buy the thing and restart it next week…..If the readers are there surely there is money enough to launch it as a going concern. Management buy out using one of the many schemes out there that funds community organisations?

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  • November 15, 2011 at 12:43 pm
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    This isn’t a shock, it was always going to happen, Thicko Mirror couldn’t run a bath let alone be trusted with regional newspapers. They have asset stripped the Brum Mail and left it a pale imitation of its former self, sold the land and rented a crap call centre in Funlop in which journos have to shout across the room there are that many empty desks. The Sutton News has 130 year history and must have still made a profit but they axed that withouut a care in the world same for the Chase Post. Mike Lockley will be fine, he’s one the best in the business, a throw back to when journalists actually had personalities and not just A-grades, a nice accent and an eye on PR. And what they have done to the photographers is just criminal, the Brum Mail used to sell big, now in a city of over a million people it doesn’t scratch the surface. Another sad day for Midlands journalism. I haven’t worked there for 3 years and it still upsets me whats happened, we all knew what was going to happen and we have been proved right.

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  • November 15, 2011 at 1:12 pm
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    The more I think about it, the more furious I am.

    As has been highlighted above, the Cannock Chase Post was still an adequately-staffed newspaper producing self-generated stories and attending court, council, inquests etc.

    It is hugely popular in the area and its editor Mike Lockley, also an award-winning Sunday Mercury columnist, is highly regarded.

    I have friends on titles elsewhere in that neck of the woods who have confirmed this.

    I thought they’d at least have had the decency to run it into the ground like every other weekly before closing the door.

    Disgrace.

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  • November 15, 2011 at 1:45 pm
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    what a surpise another Trinity ‘restructuring’ ie make fewer staff do more work for the same or less money. scrap feature positions but don’t have the guts or decency to tell those who are going to be got rid of, bring in more ‘editorial staff’ – presumably in senior posts, keep the managers, dont bite into the pay of the executives , don’t even consider any local commitment, hire an ax man with a proven track record of buggering things up. and then make sure you’ve got rid of everyone before christmas, just so you can have a jolly seasonal round of self congratulation on protecting your salaries and having editors who seem incredibly able to stand upright despite having no spines

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  • November 15, 2011 at 2:03 pm
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    Couple of interesting comments above, BMD’s plenty of ads, why close ?

    Overlap with Northcliffe titles in the area ? um I wonder !

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  • November 15, 2011 at 3:45 pm
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    Spanner.

    Anyone who has seen Trinity’s figure breakdown will know that the Midlands has been by far its worst performing department for a number of years.

    Sad to say that my only surprise is that this didn’t come sooner.

    A sad day.

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  • November 15, 2011 at 4:43 pm
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    Let’s stop talking about phone hacking and start talking about bone hacking.
    This lot, JP, Northcliffe… they cosily run everything. No competition, everything carved up between them and they can do what they like.
    The NUJ have a platform to address Leveson now – let’s finally drain this oligopolistic abscess of what’s becoming the worst so-called “free” regional Press in the western world.

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  • November 15, 2011 at 5:18 pm
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    Lots of people know the score with this shameful announcement it’s clear. Why not come to the NUJ open debate Crisis in Midlands Journalism on Thursday Dec 8 from 6.30pm at Birmingham Council House to discuss the fightback for the profession? It’s not just Trinity Mirror Midlands but the 100 editorial jobs at the BBC, Wolves Express & Star, Central News, commercial radio news etc…

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  • November 15, 2011 at 6:00 pm
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    Back in 1991, Frank Bunting, an accountant by trade but a newspaper man through and through, was chairman of Coventry Newspapers in its centenary year.
    In his introduction to the book A Century Of News he said: “In all these years the Coventry Evening Telegraph recorded and reflected what was happening at the time.”
    I was proud to be a part of the company when newspaper men like Frank Bunting ran it. Profit making, popular and part of every day life. Twenty years on, and according to the ABC figures the Coventry Telegraph, as it now is, is a pale shadow of its former self. Yes, times have changed, as Mr Bunting himself wrote in his introduction. But not to the point where the newspaper – and this could be said in any town or city – was not part of daily or weekly life. Greed, mismanagement and a focus on all things not newspapers have left once-great titles like Coventry in the mire. The internet, while having undoubtedly had a role in declining sales, is still not all things to all men. Newspapers, in all their forms, whether online or delivered by email, still have a part to play in their communities. Or, thanks to firms like Trinity Mirror, have they become so divorced from them to the point of no return? Moves like this will only continue to increase the divide.
    Bad luck for all the good journos being affected.

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  • November 15, 2011 at 6:20 pm
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    Isn’t it interesting that there haven’t been any managerial yes-men on here to defend this?
    Big Dave, I understand that the first thing CP staff knew was when they got a phone call yesterday morning to say the managers were on their way over from Birmingham to make the announcement.
    As one of those kicked out two years ago, I wonder just how much longer TM can cut and cut and cut because very soon, there will be nothing left. Funlop is already a desert, even compared to when I worked there. And how do they expect to run three respected regional newspapers without a photographic department (something not mentioned in the story above – all the Birmingham photographers are going)? Some brilliant, dedicated, professionals are being lost here. The words ‘user-contributed pictures’ have been mentioned to me today – so what happens to court pictures, football matches (PA won’t stand at the Villa end just because you ask them!) and the kind of great picture which makes a page? But then, quality doesn’t matter to TM, does it?

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  • November 18, 2011 at 9:45 am
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    Steve Z, or Adam as most people know you, it’s hard to see that you still feel so strongly about the Mail when you felt the need to drunkenly resign on Youtube from the Mail, rather than having the decency to think about the ridicule your behaviour heaped on the paper and your colleagues. Despite everything that has been heaped on it, I think the Mail is a better paper than it was three years ago, perhaps because the journalists there now aren’t busy building up their own lunchtime legends.

    Surely if the News and Post titles were making money, they’d stay open – that’s what Trinity Mirror is in business to do. You’re right about Mike Lockley – a true local journalism legend who has acted in a dignified manner.

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  • November 21, 2011 at 2:03 pm
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    I don’t know any of the titles involved here but it appears this Lockley creature is the sort of man I’d have liked to have served an appreticeship under. Sounds a right laugh. Hope you all get fixed up soon.

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  • November 22, 2011 at 12:12 pm
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    The last two editions of the Chase Post are reviewed in ‘Dyson at Large on Htfp tomorrow, Wed Nov 23. This blog will include detailed points from top Trinity Mirror sources on the reasons behind the closure.

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  • November 25, 2011 at 2:18 pm
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    I had the pleasure and honour of working with Mike Lockley and the team while I was a reporter of the Wolverhampton AdNews (axed title) and the Walsall Observer (also axed by Trinity Mirror).

    I look back at that time with fond memories and became great friends with a lot of the staff including Mike who was a fantastic editor who encouraged his reporters to get out there and get the real stories.

    Trinity should be ashamed!!!

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