A regional newspaper publisher is set to axe 24 jobs in a shake-up designed to centralise production and introduce greater content sharing across its titles.
Archant Anglia, which publishes the Eastern Daily Press, Ipswich Star and several other daily and weekly titles, wants to create a combined production unit in Norwich to serve all its newspapers in the region.
It means 14 production roles current based in Ipswich have been placed at risk of redundancy.
A further four jobs in Ipswich and six in Norwich are also at risk as a result plans for greater content sharing across the company’s four daily titles, which also include the East Anglian Daily Times and Norwich Evening News.
The company says it believes the move will enable it to be more flexible and efficient in managing its day-to-day editorial resources.
It said in a statement to staff that if the proposal goes ahead it will see the majority of Suffolk’s editorial production work moving to Norwich.
A small editorial production team will remain based in Ipswich, along with reporters, writers and photographers, meaning there will still be about 50 front-line journalists based in Suffolk.
Consultation with those staff at risk of redundancy from these proposals has begun today.
Archant Anglia managing director, Johnny Hustler, said: “Archant Anglia, like many media businesses, continues to face extremely challenging trading situations.
“It is important we do all we can to reduce the cost of producing our newspapers, while retaining as many front-line reporting staff as possible.
“The future of our business depends on creating compelling local content and delivering that to our audiences through our traditional print and emerging digital products, but at a cost we can afford.
“It is hoped that we can continue to operate professionally and sympathetically during the consultation period.”
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Subbing hubs? Seriously? Like that ever worked. Look at Northcliffe’s Nottingham shambles a few years ago, now thankfully dismantled. There’s an overriding assumption that sub editors are not a vital part of the newspaper operation, a second tier below the “front line” reporters. Huge mistake. My condolences to those having to go through redundancy
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Others have tried and failed, left with just over-worked reporters, harrassed content editors and people bunging out shapes that require constant butchering of stories and pictures. Archant will learn.
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Very interesting things going on at Archant. Trying to get everyone to forget that they were caught out doctoring their sales figures, appointing a new editorial director over their experienced editors, new broom at Norwich running two papers, same sort of arrangement at Ipswich. New ‘tv station’ that is just a collection of newspaper-standard videos. Now they report an unexpected dip in profits and allude to a rather mystifying possible £13 m tax bill in the pipeline. How did that come about and what is the background? Their production journalists and picture people are once again having to go through the redundancy process, trying to save their jobs. Some of them have been through it three or four times already. If you add on the failed attempt to launch a new paper in the north of the patch you have a situation where the staff could well be asking what on earth is going on…
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totally agree with parvenus comments
staff and businesses across Norfolk and Suffolk ARE constantly asking whats going on,i know,i work there!
its all about grabbing revenue at the cost of quality and with changed priorities all the time and u turns weekly,its chaos
There has been a general dumbing down in the last year with staff in the ad dept demoralised and many in Norfolk looking to get out having no faith in the managers or the way the company is being run or the direction its going
we have even been made to work half an hour longer each day with the bizarre belief that we will be more productive and give the company an extra 2 hours a week more selling time by each person in the dept,all thats done is to alienate the staff who simply push paper round til its time to leave, a waste of everybodys time.
how far the mighty have fallen
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