The Liverpool Post is to publish its final edition next week after 158 years in print, owner Trinity Mirror announced today.
No jobs are to be lost as a result of the closure which will see the Post’s business coverage incorporated within its daily stablemate the Liverpool Echo.
The move will also see the closure of the Post’s companion website and the Liverpool Business Daily e-edition.
Post editor Mark Thomas, who along with other Post staff is likely to be offered a new role with the company, described the decision as the “saddest” moment of his career.
Launched in 1855, the Post went weekly in November 2011 with the loss of six editorial jobs after 156 years as a daily.
The initial aim of the switch was to produce a ‘bumper’ 100-paper paper once a week with special emphasis on business, sport, the arts and politics.
At the time of the frequency change, the paper’s circulation stood at 8,217 but by the last full set of ABC figures in February this year it had fallen to 5,727.
Trinity said today that it had now become clear that there was not room in the market for two Liverpool papers.
The company said in a statement: “After an extensive review of its portfolio in the North West, Trinity Mirror is to cease weekly publication of the Liverpool Post newspaper, companion website and the Liverpool Business Daily E-Edition.
“There are no planned journalist redundancies as a consequence of this decision and the Post will continue its respected coverage of Merseyside’s business community in a Post-branded section of the Liverpool Echo.
“Trinity Mirror is also announcing ambitious plans around weekend publishing. The company is to ramp up its publishing operation across the weekend with further investment in the Echo – the UK’s Regional Newspaper of the Year.
“The Liverpool Post’s final print edition will be December 19 with the Business Daily ceasing publication on the same date.”
Trinity Mirror North West Managing Director, Steve Anderson Dixon said: ‘’This is a decision we take with the heaviest of hearts.
“Sadly, the Liverpool city region no longer generates the demand in terms of advertising or circulation, to sustain both the Post and the Liverpool Echo.
‘’We are committed to retaining the best of the Post in the Echo. We are also committed to the continued expansion of the Liverpool Echo and have exciting plans on the table for weekend publishing.
“The Echo is an extraordinary brand and we are thrilled to be expanding its reach and creating jobs as we do so.’’
Added Mark: ‘’That the Post has lasted as long is testimony to generations of brilliant and committed journalists who have worked on it.
‘’We have a history of brave and independent journalism and excellent coverage of business, arts, and sport. We will ensure we keep those traditions alive within the Liverpool Echo.’’
Mark also announced the news to his Twitter followers in a series of tweets coinciding with the official announcement.
He said: “It has been a privilege to edit the Liverpool Post for the last seven years. This is without doubt the saddest day of my career.”
“I am very proud of all the journalists who have worked alongside me on the Liverpool Post. This is no reflection on them.
“I am pleased to say that none of our journalists are losing their jobs, and all will be offered new roles at Trinity Mirror.”
Chris Morley, Northern and Midlands Organiser for the National Union of Journalists, described the move as a “shocking blow.”
He said: “The closure of The Post, as a freestanding publication, will snuff out a great and influential voice for Liverpool.
“It’s a shocking blow to the city at a time when it needs champions. The NUJ was sceptical when the title was converted from a daily newspaper into a weekly format. We didn’t believe it would generate the revenues necessary in a difficult market.
“That said, we have a responsibility to ensure the passing of the Post does not take with it journalists’ jobs. To that end we hope the company’s declared intention to boost its weekend newspaper and digital publishing yields strong results and keeps journalism flourishing in the city. We will be working hard to make sure our members get the best outcome from this announcement.”
General secretary Michelle Stanistreet added: “It is a tragedy for the city and for the journalists that such an iconic title of such long standing has been closed down.
“It seems unbelievable that Liverpool cannot sustain a daily as well as weekly. It also sends alarms bells ringing for the consequences of the trend at Trinity Mirror and other newspaper groups to convert dailies to weekly production.”
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Trinity Mirror’s boss on Merseyside should try actively marketing his titles – like all normal businesses do. Given the number of ABC1 readers who live between North Wales, the Liver Building and Southport, there is no excuse for not selling 50,000 copies per day of the Liverpool Post!
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What a load of rubbish the NUJ comes out with. First critical that they doubted the weekly would work and then they can’t understand why a weekly and daily can’t survive. The city does, by the way, have a champion – its called the Echo and the influence of the Post waned a long time ago – first as a daily when it was selling just 6,000 copies a day and now as a weekly, sorry weakly, selling a little over 4,000.
It is a sad day, no one wants to see the closure of any newspaper but it is a sign of the times and there are no job losses and that must be a real positive especially at this time of the year. I wish the staff good luck for the future.
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Sad, sad, sad. Who next?
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Shame… I was a young circulation rep working on the Daily Post in the seventies. ABC sales topped 100,000 copies a day then!!!
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Please pay attention to the wording: “There are no PLANNED journalist redundancies as a consequence of this decision” – which very clearly does not rule out job losses as a result of this move. Just not yet. Who thinks TM will fail to take advantage of a cost-cutting opportunity in the long term?
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@Media watcher: the city doesn’t have “a champion” in the form of the Oldham Echo. Instead it has a downmarket tabloid which abandoned investigative journalism years ago. It specialises in Z-list local celebrities, petty criminals, Beatle nostalgia & sychophantic coverage of the city’s two football clubs.
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Why are you calling it the Oldham Echo? The Echo is in Old Hall Street, Liverpool.
Unless you think a newspaper is defined by where it is printed? If so, you probably need to start calling the Daily Mail (to name just one example) the Oldham Mail.
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Well Correspondent, it must be doing something right as it has the sort of circulation figures most other regional newspapers would kill for
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Sad to see a well-known paper go but…..I remember reading the Daily Post in the 1970s when I was based on Merseyside for a year. I thought it was terrible, compared to the MEN I was used to.
Maybe it improved since then – I don’t know. I didn’t even know it had gone weekly – but if it is weekly, how does the URL http://www.liverpooldailypost.co.uk make sense?
5,700 copies a week across the whole of Merseyside and part of North Wales!!! A good weekly can top that in a modest market town.
Can someone tell us what actually went wrong? Could some lessons be learned?
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So which one of Trinity Mirror’s “jewels in the crown” will be next? And where/what exactly are these new roles that all the journalists are to be offered?
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Birmingham Post?
In one move they could alienate even more readers by incorporating the Post into the Mail, and appeal to neither readership.
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I’m afraid Enough Is Enough and Ex Trinity are probably right in suggesting this ‘model’ will continue, with the now weekly, business-led Birmingham Post likely to be next for the chop. There are probably no ‘planned’ redundancies because there were so few, if any, dedicated journalists working on the Liverpool Post – just like their namesake in Birmingham.
And ‘Media Watcher’, why the criticism of the NUJ? Don’t you think the industry needs an organisation that strives to fight for journalist jobs?
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Chris Youett needs to do a bit of journalistic preparation before he sounds off. The good people of North Wales are well served by Trinity Mirror through the North Wales Daily Post which broke off from the Liverpool title than a decade ago. It remains one of the best performing dailies in an admittedly challenging market.
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The Echo took all the juicy stories leaving the Post to feed off scraps.
Management carefully “re-positioned” the Post so it would not take readership from the Echo.
In effect this meant stuffing it with boring business news and tons of features.
The end was slow and painful to watch.
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With the exception of a few sentimental old hacks, I suspect no-one in Birmingham would notice if the Post was axed. Come to think of it, the Mail, selling fewer than 40,000 copies a day in a conurbation of several million souls, is effectively invisible too.
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As a cost cutting exercise, all they now have to dio is Substitute the word Liverpool for Birmingham and Mail for Echo and they can do away with another institution without having to rewrite their press release
Mmm… the problems of our industry go deeper than this. If you look at Sky’s decision to close its website in the north-east then it’s clear there’s something else going on. Our decline can’t all the blamed on that blasted internet, it seems.
I have long pondered whether there are just too many outlets for news these days and, to make our problem worse, whether the public just doesn’t have the time to read/watch/consume news any more. I suspect the viewing figures of BBC’s 6pm news are nowhere near what they used to be either. And how many people really do get their news from websites?
We’ve moved from a fixed 9am-to-5pm culture to one where the public work irregular (and long) hours and where staple sporting fixtures, for example, are scatter-gunned across the schedules, frustrating media that rely on set deadlines.
It may go without saying but I also feel there is too little news but too many outlets repeating the same stories, adding to the public’s weary sense of deja-vu when they do read/watch/consume news.
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Its a shame, but the Liverpool Echo does Liverpool so well, there was no point persevering with the Post. Welsh Post is still performing well though, one of TM’s best performers and the Liverpool Echo continues to be one of the most successful regional in the UK with figures that most of us would give our right leg for, so its not all doom and gloom on Merseyside by any means.
@Correspondent. Thats what people want to read about!
@Chris Youett, Esq. Really? Please do show us how….
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Ex Trinity Mirror hack : we want a union that is progressive not one that constantly whinges. I’m also fed up with looking for someone to blame. The union needs to wake up & smell the coffee – consumer behaviour has changed so let’s start to build for the future! The announcement says ‘no job losses’ which
Is good news. I don’t see the union fighting for journalists – in this case what is there to fight for?
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There’s one simple reason why the Post is doing so well – football.
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