AddThis SmartLayers

Jobs set to go at family-owned publisher in bid to save £600k

David HelliwellA number of sub-editing and photographic roles are under threat at a family-owned publishing group as it looks to save £600,000 a year.

The Carlisle-based CN Group has announced plans to centralise three of its titles under a single editor and reduce the number of production and photographic roles.

HTFP understands that a third of the existing 21 production roles are likely to go and that two editor positions are also under threat.

The News & Star, the Workington Times & Star and the Whitehaven News all currently have individual editors but this will be reduced to one under the new proposals.

The company said in a statement: “CN Group has today announced a series of proposals to restructure its editorial operation and opened up a company-wide voluntary redundancy scheme.

“In a series of briefings, staff at all centres were told the financial performance of the business needs to improve to help maintain its ability to invest in its future and sustainability.  As such the company is looking to reduce editorial costs by £600,000 a year to help improve financial results.

“The proposals include centrally managing a reduced number of production journalists working across all titles. Similarly, it is proposed there will be a smaller team of centrally-managed photographers.

“In West Cumbria it is proposed staff on three titles – Times & Star, Whitehaven News and News and Star West – would be merged into one West Cumbria team, under the leadership of one editor. All titles and offices will continue to operate.”

News & Star editor and group editorial director David Helliwell, pictured, said: “Like all in the local media business, we cannot hide from some tough choices.

“The proposals announced today would put our titles on a stronger financial footing while retaining our ability to cover our communities thoroughly. Our priority now is to consult fully with all staff who would be affected.”

Applications for voluntary redundancy will be open until Wednesday 17 February.

The announcement comes shortly after the retirement of long-serving CN chief executive Robin Burgess at the end of January.  His family continue to own the group.

36 comments

You can follow all replies to this entry through the comments feed.
  • February 9, 2016 at 1:50 pm
    Permalink

    And the good news just keeps on coming… I wonder how many of us will be left at the end of the year. I repeat earlier advice, as offered by the poet Philip Larkin and wise posters on this site: Get out as early as you can.

    Report this comment

    Like this comment(10)
  • February 9, 2016 at 2:14 pm
    Permalink

    I’ve not seen a cull of this kind at a family based organisation since The Godfather part 2.

    Report this comment

    Like this comment(18)
  • February 9, 2016 at 2:32 pm
    Permalink

    Its a shame when the smaller family-owned indies start culling like the bigger groups. I see the plan is for a sort of group editor to look after three papers. Good luck with that one if JP and the like are anything to go by! At least this lot are keeping the offices open.

    Report this comment

    Like this comment(8)
  • February 9, 2016 at 2:41 pm
    Permalink

    And here we go again
    Another day another cull

    If there’s anyone with ambition ( or a mortgage) left in the regional press my advice is look around and have an exit plan ready because sure as eggs are eggs you’ll need it before too long

    Worrying but true

    Report this comment

    Like this comment(14)
  • February 9, 2016 at 2:53 pm
    Permalink

    Ashley Highfield is an absolute disgrace!……hang on, wrong thread….Trinity Mirror at it again…..shareholders put first, typical PLC….hang on, wrong thread. Perhaps the industry – the industry- has a challenge in adapting to new customer behaviours. Might not all be simply self harming. Stands back and awaits abuse

    Report this comment

    Like this comment(11)
  • February 9, 2016 at 4:14 pm
    Permalink

    As someone who has been there and got the T-shirt, I wish the very best to all at risk. On a slightly brighter note, I can confirm there is a whole new and better world outside the regional press.

    Report this comment

    Like this comment(4)
  • February 9, 2016 at 4:54 pm
    Permalink

    £600,000 saving from 9 staff/ job losses, what sort of salaries are these guys paying?

    Salary savings aside where will the remaining savings come from?
    I also note, and no surprise here, that no commercial ad sales jobs are at risk? If they’re like the other local news Gropius they’ll be too heavy with managers and ad reps who presumably aren’t doing the business as they quote the financial situation needs to improve so if that doesn’t point the finger in the direction of the ad reps what does?
    Likely they think that jobs they don’t directly bring in revenue are the easiest ones to take out, I’d say of your job role is to bring in revenue sbd clearly you’re not then your job sound be at risk, not those already working longer and harder to cover for job cuts previously made.
    Same old story and one that won’t change until one group md or ceo has the guts to trim the underperforming sales teams

    Report this comment

    Like this comment(20)
  • February 9, 2016 at 4:58 pm
    Permalink

    Excuse the many typos in the above ,frustration and anger at more severe job cuts over-rode the thought to check, guilty as charged

    Report this comment

    Like this comment(2)
  • February 9, 2016 at 5:13 pm
    Permalink

    They are looking for voluntary redundancies to make up the figures. If there are not enough volunteers, compulsory redundancies will be next on the agenda. This story is just beginning. And yes, what a shame it is for a small regional to ape the big groups instead of attempting to do something more creative and visionary. Tired thinking which will only hasten further decline.

    Report this comment

    Like this comment(11)
  • February 9, 2016 at 6:03 pm
    Permalink

    I honestly think the ad depts have to take a lot of responsibility here. I sometimes wonder if the reps actually read the paper they work for. Maybe they are young mums who haven’t got a lot of free time so maybe forward-thinking ad managers should give them an hour each week to do so. I’ve never met one. Phone stats rule. Without naming names, a great paper I was lucky enough to edit had this: ad reps would often ask the sports ed ‘is there anything about ****** football club in this week’s paper?’ The Football League team was based a few miles away from our office! And we carried four pages of their news every (rpt every) week. Nothing more to say.

    Report this comment

    Like this comment(8)
  • February 9, 2016 at 6:06 pm
    Permalink

    Sad. Unless you have worked for – or rather with – CN group, you won’t understand quite how sad. This move has long been resisted, for all the right reasons. The inevitable has hit… eventually. Suppose it was bound to. Not to decry subbing skills in any way, the photographic talents on all thei CN titles are exceptional. I wish Dave Helliwell & all at CN, who are struggling with today’s news, the very best.

    Report this comment

    Like this comment(13)
  • February 9, 2016 at 6:34 pm
    Permalink

    I regret the trend for not me but him when it comes to the ad reps. The fact is that its harder to sell ads and easier to create content. Not least as the price of ads goes up as the audience goes down. That’s just a trend. Firing ad reps to save money will not save a single editorial job. Ad managers have a staff budget and a sales target. Ad staff turnover always used to be high anyway and frankly who are they going to recruit? Would any decent salesperson opt for a declining industry?

    Report this comment

    Like this comment(5)
  • February 9, 2016 at 10:58 pm
    Permalink

    You can always rely on Jeff Jones to take someone’s bad news and turn it into a sarcastic comment on here. Get a life.

    Report this comment

    Like this comment(4)
  • February 10, 2016 at 7:58 am
    Permalink

    Kenny, easier to forgive your typos than it is to forgive your train of thought. which derailed very quickly. The commercial teams sell an audience, that audience is dwindling due to all the factors every cardigan wearing expert on this site already knows (reduced readership). Overstaffed and overpaid commercial teams are like unicorns, they simply don’t exist. They had the fat trimmed about a decade before editorial fell into the accountants cross hairs. they were being slashed, consolidated, outsourced, put on performance related pay and monitored and measured every minute of every day, years ago. They now sell more (print and on-line), with fewer resources and with a dwindling reach and market penetration. And despite the aeons old “editorial v everybody else employed in newspapers” you need to realise that the cuts impact on every operational employee and show some solidarity and appreciation for all of the cogs in the wheel, not just a select few.

    Report this comment

    Like this comment(14)
  • February 10, 2016 at 9:12 am
    Permalink

    So it’s the ad reps fault!. Pleasing to see some commentators already come to their aid here, and carts puts it very elegantly- but editorial haven’t shouldered the impact of recent years alone.

    Report this comment

    Like this comment(4)
  • February 10, 2016 at 9:55 am
    Permalink

    Knew this would happen the minute Robin retired and they brought in a suit – who I notice has left the dirty work of commenting to poor old Helliwell. Robin always made his own comments. I will also observe that the suit planning this tired old model of cuts may not have reckoned with the price the company will have to pay in redundo – most of the staff throughout Cumbria have been there since they left school, and they’re almost all, shall we say it, “mature”!

    Report this comment

    Like this comment(5)
  • February 10, 2016 at 10:42 am
    Permalink

    A sad day indeed but we now have a generation growing up not interested in newspapers – you can try everything under the sun to entice them away from their phones, iPads and social media but you won’t succeed. This is one of the best run newspaper groups in the country, awards galore for great newspapers – they even trained me all those years ago – but it’s now on the same downward spiral as the rest of the provincial press. Circulations are falling in double figures each year now,, improving your website may help but can it attract the advertising you need to survive? Sadly not. I hate to say it but a lot of the provincial press will have disappeared for good by the end of this decade.

    Report this comment

    Like this comment(3)
  • February 10, 2016 at 12:14 pm
    Permalink

    My analogy would be, they are bricking up the windows to save time and money cleaning them. Its always the visual professionals who bear the brunt of cutbacks – the shop windows of the business.

    Report this comment

    Like this comment(1)
  • February 10, 2016 at 12:22 pm
    Permalink

    Sixties reporter: I think you’re being very, very optimistic when you say a lot of the provincial press will have disappeared by the end of the decade. The end is in sight for many much sooner than that.

    Report this comment

    Like this comment(3)
  • February 10, 2016 at 1:35 pm
    Permalink

    Kenny, it’s not nine job losses. The plan is for 15 job losses plus potential others by voluntary redundancy, and the salaries in question won’t make up the bulk of the targeted £600K.

    Report this comment

    Like this comment(0)
  • February 10, 2016 at 2:27 pm
    Permalink

    take the voluntary redundancy if you possibly can. JP workers faced the same situation. Some (amazingly considering the way they have been treated) did not want to leave the industry but they guessed if they didn’t they would be clobbered by compulsory job losses. About a year later they were proved right.

    Report this comment

    Like this comment(0)
  • February 10, 2016 at 4:16 pm
    Permalink

    I don’t get why young people are training to be newspaper journos. Is it that they can’t think of anything else to do or are they ignorant of the chaos in the industry? It is a fast dying industry,too, I am sorry to say.

    Report this comment

    Like this comment(5)
  • February 10, 2016 at 5:00 pm
    Permalink

    For decades ad staff are and were treated a third class department, and also the least well paid, behind production and editorial. Production imposing strict deadlines and dumping advertisements, and therefore money, for those which may have been a minute late. Editorial dictating where ads could be placed. Few, if any, advertisements on page one where there is a huge demand at premium rates. Early pages with few or no ads, also premium revenue positions. Ads bumped at the editors behest.
    Journalists slagging off advertisers, who pay their and production staff salaries, without consulting the ad department sales person responsible for the account.
    In any other industry sales people are paid the highest salaries as their skills and enterprise maintain the lifeblood of any business.Money. Yes publishing is a business and newspapers are a product. Just like a Mars Bar

    Report this comment

    Like this comment(5)
  • February 10, 2016 at 6:16 pm
    Permalink

    Everybody gets their news from Facebook now, shared from newspaper websites……oh hang on! The digital dark ages are descending!

    Report this comment

    Like this comment(0)
  • February 10, 2016 at 7:47 pm
    Permalink

    In any commercial sector, pay is performance related but not so in the regional press these days
    If the company sets a budget and demands it’s achieved those responsible for achieving it should be held to account, no other department gets a bonus for doing your job and if the required targets aren’t achieved what happens to the rep? Nothing , just the deficit accrues and the situation gets worse for everyone .
    Not sure where these lean mean ad teams are @carts ? the ones I work with are fully staffed everyone’s got a pompous title such as team leader manager or some other such pointless title that flatters the ego but doesnt pay any more but presumably keeps the individual happy.
    As for complaining that reps are put on performance paid against objectives That is what a proper sales structure does, any decent sales person will accept it as part of the job so what do yuu expect? To be paid for missing target and failing as now?
    Easy to blame the market ,the economy or any other excuse but the facts are that if sales people don’t sell then they’re not sales people do are not doing their job.
    Sadly it’s the same old same old from reps who expect the big bonuses when times are good but can’t accept the blame or being under the spotlight during times when real sales skills are needed to help the business out of the dire state it’s in.

    Report this comment

    Like this comment(7)
  • February 10, 2016 at 8:16 pm
    Permalink

    Dear me @business is business is a bit bitter isn’t he !

    Sadly his rant typifies the tunnel vision of many reps who think people buy papers to read adverts and the ads are more important than the news with his classic “…Few, if any, advertisements on page one where there is a huge demand at premium rates..” Good idea! that would really encourage people to pick up a copy wouldn’t it – welcome to the free sheets of the 1980s

    As for the ironic
    “…. any other industry sales people are paid the highest salaries as their skills and enterprise maintain the lifeblood of any business…..” is a classic own goal as the state of the industry and all regional press groups including no doubt his own wherever that might be,are in dire straits and where the lifeblood ISN’T being maintained which would indicate by his own reasoning that it actually IS the sales people’s fault.

    Though the best of the rant is probably
    “….Journalists slagging off advertisers, who pay their and production staff salaries, without consulting the ad department sales person responsible for the account” which implies the issue he has is one of the journalists doing the ‘slagging off” should consult the rep first BEFORE doing the slagging off”?

    let’s all hope his communication with customers is better than in this post.

    Report this comment

    Like this comment(6)
  • February 10, 2016 at 8:35 pm
    Permalink

    Yes, CN Group has or had many “mature” journalists. Many stayed because it is based in a great area to live and also because it was a decent company to work for. The result was that it was lucky enough to employ talented people who were rooted in the community with great contacts. That is why its papers and the staff won so many awards. But a belief now prevails that journalists and journalism must be ditched in favour of commercially-led pap. This is so desperately short-sighted. Remaining readership will fall away. The job cuts are not so much a rescue plan as a suicide pact.

    Report this comment

    Like this comment(4)
  • February 11, 2016 at 7:01 am
    Permalink

    It’s a point of business fact @try this for size
    If an individual or a department is responsible for delivering X and doesn’t they should be accountable.
    If I employ a plumber to fix my tap and an electrician to fix my lights and the plumber fails to do his job I wouldn’t sack the sparky, yet in RP this is how ‘cost savings’ are made with sales people missing targets month in month out yet still remaining in place to carry on doing so,
    Even worse is the plumber paid to do his job then has a team leader and manager out with him drinking tea, shuffling paper and doing nothing to help him do his job but still the electrician is sacked.
    THEN they change tact and decide th tap hadn’t been fixed so they sack the people making the taps.
    However I do agree that no decent sales person would apply to join the regional press these days, there’s no future in it and all the skilled sales professionals left years ago

    Report this comment

    Like this comment(8)
  • February 11, 2016 at 8:02 am
    Permalink

    End of the decade ?”sixties reporter” by the end of this year the media landscape in the uk regionals will have changed dramatically and well ahead of the end of the decade i believe most news grouops will cease to exist as we know them having been diversified into ones unrecognisable in traditional media terms

    as for reps not to blame by a couple of views on here,commercial derpartments have budgets set to achieve that managers accept and then p;ass to their ereps as targets which need to be achieved,clearly theyre not so whos fault is it?,those writing the content or those responsible for attaining revenue? maybe if the middle managers fought the commercial corner and didnt accept ,or at least challendged the budgetary requiremenrts of their departments then the reps might be higher achievers?,whilst they nod in all the right places for fear of their own scalps the budgets set need to be achieveed and those responsible need to deliver.looking at the sales perfromances for majority/all regionals,and listenbing to the reasons given by the owners as to why cuts are necesary then this isnt happening.
    its all very well saying we`re all right jack but when it comes to first departments to go its alwasy editorial who cannot influence ad sales revenues.
    same old same old

    Report this comment

    Like this comment(9)
  • February 11, 2016 at 10:05 am
    Permalink

    Here’s why ad reps jobs are so hard. JP Newsquest et al got rid of most of the good experienced journalists. The rump is under-staffed and inexperienced and it shows in the quality. Advertisers don’t like it, or the falling sales. So they either drive an impossibly hard bargain or don’t bother at all. The paper gets smaller and more advertisers jump ship. We have watched this cycle of doom for seven or eight years now.
    Contrary to what senior management think, readers and advertisers are not silly. They know a crap paper and website when they see one.

    Report this comment

    Like this comment(3)
  • February 11, 2016 at 11:18 am
    Permalink

    All the decent sales people have seen the way things are going and left the regional press to join other industries or local competitor media and are now very likely to be exploiting the many failings of the big boys and successfully selling against them. Having been in regional press for almost thirty years I know all the talented sales people who have left have gone on to further success in competitor media often selling against their former employers, all are thriving and have a great quality of life, far better than when working on the regionals when internal politics,empire building,yes man mentality and small mindedness are rife.
    Proper Business minded sales professionals in my experience,aren’t daft but they’re a rare commodity,they put a value on their skills, contacts and reputation and when those abilities aren’t being used they move on leaving just those who are less skilled or hanging on for dear life afraid of the time their number is called and they find themselves cast aside with no other job prospects to go to.

    most again in my experience,are happy to take a big bonus when times are good and the economy’s buoyant yet whinge and moan to anyone who’ll listen about being ‘ managed and put on performance related structures which is a criteria any decent sales professional knows is part and parcel of a sales function yet is one these reps fail to understand.
    Irrespective of the economy, too few benefits are being sold and its come down to a “do you a deal mate “mentality of sell it late sell it cheap.
    Good sales people are out there but none are interested in joining their local paper these days. The result of which is failing advertising revenues and remaining high cost overheads. Somethings got to give so you can’t blame the bosses for making cuts, it’s just a case of the fairness of where the cuts are made

    Report this comment

    Like this comment(8)
  • February 11, 2016 at 2:42 pm
    Permalink

    IF you’re offered VR my advice would be to take it, what ever would keep you at a place that’s downsizing and in an industry that really has no future, yes some groups will tumble along existing period to period, quarter to quarter but there’s no longevity in it and better to be ahead of the pack wren it comes to getting a new job than in amongst it when the inevitable happens and youre all scrapping around for the off job going.
    I took VR a couple of years ago and haven’t looked back, i am settled into a role in superb independent local lifestyle magazine which produces great copy, top photography and where the sales team all get on and business is booming. It’s interesting to hear how poorly thought of the big boy need group is viewed by the business community and how much business the ad team are taking off customers who used to spend in the local press. So don’t fear VR welcome it, feel sorry for those bumping along the bottom knowing their time will come and probably when they’re least expecting it.
    Good wishes to all affected

    Report this comment

    Like this comment(5)
  • February 11, 2016 at 7:03 pm
    Permalink

    Not at all helpful advertising & editorial depts popping at each other. Although you can see how it hsppens. Since Moses was a lad, journos – with umpteen daily targets – have never understood sales depts’ monthly targets. It has always been the case that local papers have been starved of ads until commercial target week (usually last in the month) when there’s a sudden rush to sell. Then comes the winding down period… of 2/3 weeks for sales folks. If every week were a commercial target week, finances might – just might – be a tad more healthy. But that has more to do with imposed salary structures than anything else. Shop floor guys & girls have no power to influence it. But they will always be the ones to suffer.

    Report this comment

    Like this comment(0)
  • February 12, 2016 at 11:25 am
    Permalink

    Don’t think it’s ind versus the other ginpot it’s more frustration at how whenever dmcuts need to happen or savings need to be made irrespective of the reasons or cysts it’s always from the edit: photo departments and never from .ad sales.
    As majority of the reasons for the cuts happening is given to less than expected profit or rising costs against falling ad revenue it seems unfair to always cut back on the already reduced to the bone editorial teams who are not responsible or judged against revenues.its a case of being fair and making the necessary savings in the areas where the staff FTE numbers are high yet the results are poor.
    Edit have been cut back already at the cost of quality so further cuts will see even more good people going and standsrds and quality dropping further which helps no one

    Report this comment

    Like this comment(1)