The National Union of Journalists has warned Trinity Mirror readers are “turning away” from its print products due to a “loss of quality”.
The union has written to the company’s shareholders prior to its annual general meeting in London today, and has also called for all of its journalists to receive at least the Living Wage Foundation rate of £9.40.
The NUJ said its members were “increasingly concerned” by the quality of content at TM titles and the “unhealthy blurring of lines between editorial and commercial”.
Today’s meeting comes in the wake of a series of senior editorial departures from former Local World titles bought by Trinity Mirror last year, along with the loss of staff photographer roles at a number of titles.
The NUJ letter reads: “The company sensibly backed away from requiring journalists to meet individual targets that risked descending into a chase for internet ‘click bait’.
“While commercial pressure is growing, editorial resources still decline. In repeated restructures, news photographers are vanishing – along with their quality pictures which drive web hits.
“Our members fear readers are noticing the loss of quality and turning away from the company’s printed products, putting a sustainable future under threat.
“We say continuing cuts – including to former Local World titles – undermine the whole business. Please let the directors know if you agree that successful local news needs to be close to the communities being reporting on.”
Trinity Mirror has declined to comment on the letter.
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How very English, when all else fails write a letter
I dont think it takes a letter from the NUJ to point out falling readerships, commercially driven content or the choice of cheap over quality across the business ,I’m sure the TM chieftains know this already.it’s what they choose to do about it that matters and clearly that’s nothing. They’ve set their business plan and strategies in place for whatever reason and are sticking to them and their lack of comments all the way through speak volumes that they’re on a road they have no intention of diverting from and no amount of letter writing will make any difference what so ever.
Actions speak louder than words but sadly words are all the NUJ appears to have at its disposal these days, wagging a finger while the ‘cost efficiencies’ and culling goes on.
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The quality of photography in TM’s regional titles is absolutely dire. Take a look at most of the sport pages, for example, and there are endless submitted shots of badly composed, blurry team line-ups, all static, and not conveying the dynamism and excitement of sport. For high-profile confirmation of this nonsense take the Leicester Mercury’s horrendous “special edition” for the biggest sporting upset in history – a tired old team photo with the word “Champions” superimposed. Brilliant, eh? Readers are turning away and perhaps one of the most damning comments I’ve recently heard about one local title is “it used to be a really good paper not so long ago”. Chuck in the closure of New Day and the prospect of paying out millions for phone hacking etc. and here we have a company in deep, deep trouble. Local management buyouts may be the only salvation for some titles because the age of the mega-publishing corporation is swiftly drawing to an end.
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Someone tried to give me a free New Day on opening day and I said no, which says it all.
If you buy a modern print product you’re basically accepting the fact the person selling it to you thinks you’re a moron. They’re absolute garbage, and I don’t care how many times we hear the spiel about the internet and social media and all that palava, it’s not – it’s axing of quality from top to bottom.
Said it before but I know people, a lot of people, who regularly spend 20 quid a month on magazines. Now, why would you buy, say, 442? You’d buy it because you’d presume there’s decent interviews in there, good photography and good design.
If Trinity Mirror got hold of it, the insight pieces would be written by an intern with a digital marketing background, and the photography would consist of user generated mobile phone images of the back of Michael Owen’s head at Sainsbury’s.
The likes of TIM are a massive and obscene exercise in Emperor’s New Clothes. Editors pretending to edit, journos pretending to be journos (not that it’s their fault, they have no time or resources) it’s not a newsgathering operation in any way shape or form.
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@ Dick Minim, you should take a look at the Newcastle titles which still have a good complement of excellent photographers meaning that the Chronicle, Journal and Sunday Sun actually have a better standard than most, although wonky shots from reporters are still rife, especially online.
Re the “unhealthy blurring of lines between editorial and commercial”, the Chronicle ran an online story about Amazon Lockers yesterday which was nothing more than a blatant ad feature, as some of the reader comments also pointed out.
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Fair point, Adrian, and I’m sure the Newcastle titles run excellent pictures. But if you still have pro photographers you’re lucky, as those in the SE, for example, have mostly gone due to TM cuts and standards have dropped through the floor. Still, the Dover Express managed to get hold of a pro for the football club’s play-off game last night and the difference is vast, superb action shots as compared to many of that region’s dire procession of submitted team line-ups – invariably badly composed, poorly lit and wrongly exposed. And as for that Leicester Mercury front page… oh, come on.
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This is why the NUJ is so frustrating – if they are our last line of defence as journalists, we’re screwed. In fact, they aren’t our last line of defence because they don’t know what to fight against. Time and time again the NUJ paints the internet out as a big and scary thing, and hides behind hard-left rhetoric about fat cats etc, but never comes up with a sensible solution that would sustain jobs. Most journalists I know are proud of what they do, so for the union to turn round and say quality is going down is a kick in the teeth. They need rational arguments, which offer an alternative. For example, where’s the paper that proves that not cost cutting means not losing sales? The NUJ speaks the language of 1980s Labour, and that’s bad for journalists. As for ‘Jeff Jones’, you clearly haven’t spent much time in a newsroom lately, and for someone who holds journalism in such contempt, you seem to spend far too much time on here.
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First to go down? TM or JP?
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If there is a God up there I thank him that I no longer have to make a living in “journalism” when I read stuff like this. So much negativity.
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(damn it! Where’s a sub when you need one!) BEWARE…..OR ELSE I SHALL FORCE you TO WORK FOREVER MORE ON TRINITY MIRROR NEWSPAPERS!
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Me too Grateful. It’s as though those on here who claim to be interested in journalism want it all to collapse so they can say ‘I told you so.’
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grateful: there isn’t “a God up there” (where up there exactly?).
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