Comments on: Jobs set to go as Yorkshire daily newsrooms merge

By: Barbarossa

Barbarossa — Mon, 18 Jun 2012 16:36:19 +0000

“Editorial staff were expected to be available to work at virtually any time of the day or evening, seven days a week. Thinking back, although there were at least as many women in the newsroom and features department as men, I don’t think any of them had any .
children.

“I am certainly not saying the ‘old days’ were better, but simply pointing up the immense changes in attitudes. ”

…and we all know the bunch of sociopaths that those attitudes bred on newsdesks, top tables and in editors’ offices. And I hope Rupert Bear would agree.
The gift of hindsight now allows me to see the amount of bullying that went on earlier in my career..
On one evening I worked on I saw newly-arrived youngsters from weeklies hounded daily by news editors who prided themselves on having no social life or relationships outside journalism, broken marriages and tunnel vision. I know of two youngsters who could not take any more, bit the bullet and returned to their previous jobs.
Happily, there is a God, and one or two of these sociopaths have had their own personal traumas since.
I am now out of regional journalism and would not recommend any of my extended family to go into the business. It’s gone.

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By: GladImOutOfIt

GladImOutOfIt — Mon, 18 Jun 2012 13:26:34 +0000

Neil, you are right. Except that in the days when the YP and the YEP were genuinely different papers, before the 90s, they had different agendas. The YP was the Times of Yorkshire – heavyweight, rural, agricultural and political; the YEP was AKA the Leeds Evening Post, and it was Leeds’s local evening paper. They were two very different animals. By the late 90s the rot was well set in.

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By: Neil Hodge

Neil Hodge — Mon, 18 Jun 2012 11:32:29 +0000

I empathise with anyone who loses their job. However, I have never understood how financially feasible it is to have two sets of newspapers duplicating much of the same content with two sets of ring-fenced staff in the same building.

I did some work experience as a trainee with the Yorkshire Post in the late 1990s and found it bizarre that you could have 3-4 journalists from the same building effectively working on the same 200-250 word story, with two photographers then going out separately to do pictures. The Northern Echo – which also housed the Darlington & Stockton Times – operated in exactly the same way: on one occasion, there were 5 of us from two newspapers at a story about naming guide-dog puppies.

It is still possible to publish two strong and distinct titles using pooled resources: it should also result in a wider spread of content, and deeper coverage. Some commentators on the site complain about slash and burn and financial mismanagement and poor editorial leadership – that is fine. However, they should also consider how newspapers have been able to go on for so long with such a duplication of work.

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By: Rupert Bear

Rupert Bear — Mon, 18 Jun 2012 10:41:38 +0000

The post from JPworker really illustrates the social changes of recent decades.

In my days on a regional daily paper (admittedly now a long time ago) , the very idea that childcare arrangements could be allowed to have an impact on an individual’s working life was a virtually unknown factor.

Editorial staff were expected to be available to work at virtually any time of the day or evening, seven days a week. Thinking back, although there were at least as many women in the newsroom and features department as men, I don’t think any of them had any .
children.

I am certainly not saying the ‘old days’ were better, but simply pointing up the immense changes in attitudes.

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By: Stu Arnold

Stu Arnold — Mon, 18 Jun 2012 10:25:10 +0000

Sad, but inevitable. The days of provincial daily newspapers existing side by side along each other but with distinct staff are over.

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By: JPworker

JPworker — Mon, 18 Jun 2012 08:53:20 +0000

The cuts are not as bad as some of us feared, but they are bad enough.

More volunteers may yet come forward to go as the YEP is changing hours from an 8am start to 9.30am with a finish at 5.30pm instead of 4pm. There will also be a much later evening shift.

On one hand, it’s good to be able to get much later breaking stories in the paper, this is long overdue, but on the other, there are a lot of staff with young families who will find it very difficult to sort out different childcare arrangements. Hard to see how the number of staff with these issues will be able to be accommodated with family friendly hours.

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By: snapper

snapper — Fri, 15 Jun 2012 16:39:58 +0000

And next they save on two titles and merge into one and then it becomes the weekly yorkshire news….

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By: paperboy

paperboy — Fri, 15 Jun 2012 15:46:44 +0000

The NUJ can condemn all they like.
It’s done
End of.

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By: Bob Walker

Bob Walker — Fri, 15 Jun 2012 15:42:20 +0000

As a former EP staffer I can only feel sympathy for my colleagues. Sad to say this story is repeated throughout the industry….print and broadcasting.

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By: TheFoxInTheBox

TheFoxInTheBox — Fri, 15 Jun 2012 15:02:37 +0000

Big, big shame and my sympathies go to staff at both titles. Journalism loses out, as do the readers; and yes, there are still tens of thousands of the latter in Leeds – it’s just they are choosing to consume their news using different methods.

These are the latest victims of an industry that failed to re-invent itself in time.

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By: Curious

Curious — Fri, 15 Jun 2012 14:55:42 +0000

The only differentiation between the two titles will be the masthead.

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By: phnurg

phnurg — Fri, 15 Jun 2012 14:50:36 +0000

Another day, another JP bloodbath…now if they’d only target the real culprits behind the corporate collapse…

dream on

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By: Barbarossa

Barbarossa — Fri, 15 Jun 2012 14:41:07 +0000

So ends the golden age.

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By: Jeremy Deacon

Jeremy Deacon — Fri, 15 Jun 2012 14:36:55 +0000

Oh dear…..It’s is terrible seeing the slow death of a great newspaper.

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