Journalism jobs and news from Holdthefrontpage.co.uk

Regional press news - this story published 18 December 2008

New editor handed redundancy notice

by Paul Linford

Six jobs are set to go and the editors of two weeklies forced to compete for the same job in a shake-up of Newsquest's Wiltshire operation.

The regional publisher, whose US-based parent company Gannett is axing thousands of jobs worldwide, has announced it is merging the newsrooms of the Wiltshire Times and the Wiltshire Gazette and Herald.

Wiltshire Times editor Neville Smith was handed a redundancy notice on Monday - less than six months after he took up the post.

He must now compete for his job against his counterpart from the Gazette and Herald, with ten posts across the two titles being reduced to four in the proposed new structure.

The two deputy editors' posts have also been declared redundant, but as reported on HoldtheFrontPage earlier this week, Wiltshire Times deputy editor Keith Gale has already opted to take early retirement after 46 years in the profession.

Other posts at risk of redundancy are the news editor of the Wiltshire Times, one sports writer/sub-editor, one photographer, one reporter, one sub and one admininstrator.

The proposed changes were set out in a memo by Newsquest's Oxfordshire and Wiltshire regional managing director Shamus Donald.

He said: "Trading conditions have been challenging for some time now and the market has become more uncertain in many areas. This means that we must take action to reduce costs so that we can protect the overall business for the future.

"As a result, we are proposing to re-organise the Wiltshire weekly titles. The result will be a streamlined management structure and lower overall staffing.

"Although ten posts are at risk of redundancy, we are creating four new posts for the combined weeklies team."

A consultation process with staff has now begun and is due to conclude on 13 January 2009.

It will be overseen by Simon O'Neill, currently group editor in Oxfordshire, and formerly group editor of Newsquest Wiltshire for several years.

Mr Donald added: "I appreciate that this is an uncertain time for everyone potentially affected by these proposals, particularly at this time of the year. The proposals are in no way intended to be a reflection of the hard work and dedication of the people concerned.

"This restructuring is a necessary step in safeguarding the future prospects of the company, the excellent titles we publish and the hard working and professional staff we employ."

Fox Mulder (18/12/2008 09:50)
We wish you a merry Christmas, we wish you a merry Christmas, we wish you a merry Christmas and a happy New Year... The question that all journos have to consider is will this industry sustain a career/pay our mortgages until we retire and will this industry still be able to provide a pension for us in our old age? Sadly, I think not.

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Rick Waghorn (18/12/2008 10:08)
Other posts at risk of redundancy are the news editor of the Wiltshire Times, one sports writer/sub-editor, one photographer, one reporter, one sub and one admininstrator. That's my old job going down the pan then... sports-writer/sub on the Wilsthire Gazette & Herald...

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elizabeth eyre (18/12/2008 10:32)
It certainly won't, Fox, but has it ever? I left local newspapers back in 2000 to go into magazines in London purely because I couldn't afford to stay - my pay during 12 years' working as a newspaper reporter never got above £13,000, despite rising to the dizzy heights of news editor. I think it's always been a vocation, despite the general public thinking we all earn the same salary as the likes of Andrew O'Neill. I really think there should be a national inquiry - along the lines of the one in Wales - into the state of the regional press in this country, including pay and conditions.

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John (18/12/2008 11:32)
Elizabeth is right. I worked on a west London paper and was on £13,000 as a trainee, trying my best to live in London. Then I reached the lofty heights of 19k when i became a senior and still struggled to make do. I'm 24, and at the moment i'm out of work because I went travelling after working on a weekly for two years. Questions i'm asking are - will i ever get back into newspapers? (considering i've already received rejections from all the ones I've applied for off htfp) and is there any point even trying to get back into journalism with the low pay and the appalling state it is in...

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Lister (18/12/2008 11:35)
Any industry that makes a profit is sustainable. That's basic capitalism. The motivation nowadays, though, is not sustainability but greed. If it doesn't make enough profit, sack the staff then close the paper. Unfortunately, that's capitalism too. What we are witnessing is the nearest thing we are going to get to our very own pit closure programme.

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Ray (18/12/2008 11:55)
Pay in this sindustry in a joke. And the redundancy packages being banded about are so paltry, it beggars belief. What needs to happen is companies should look at the fat cats pulling in £90k plus. Get rid of some of these people and it will allow a) journalists to get more pay, and b) the company to have more money, thus less need to get rid of staff who actually offer value for money.

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Fox Mulder (18/12/2008 12:03)
The problem isn't just the recession (although clearly it's a factor). The problem is that the newspaper business model is fundamentally broken. Traditional revenue streams like jobs and classifieds have migrated online - never to return, even after the recession. The property boom's over. The industry's still not figured out how to monetise its websites - and it may never succeed. Sales are slumping - many papers have lost sight of their communities and rely on on-diary events and PR handouts for copy, mainly because staffing levels have decreased over the years and you'll never get that resource back. Editorially, many papers are now a pale shadow of their former selves. Put yourself in a shopper's shoes. You're in a supermarket, you pick up a local paper and a tin of beans. The paper has just gone up in price, has half the amount of news in that it had a year ago and the pages that remain are tighly packed with ads (in a bid to cut newsprint costs and meet already restrictive ratios). The same shopper opens his tin of beans - only to find fewer beans in a sea of tomato sauce. Would that shopper accept Heinz's reason that things are difficult and they can't put as many beans in their product? No, they wouldn't, they wouldn't buy that brand of beans any more. So why does the newspaper industry expect punters to just continue to buy its products? Like I say, it's a fundamentally flawed business model. Silly analogy, but I hope you get the point. Yes, there's a recession on, but the people who run this business have ensured that it's fundamentally flawed and, ultimately, one that won't sustain me as a worker for the next 30 years or so.

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John (18/12/2008 12:10)
Great analogy Fox. I worked for a trinity mirror owned london weekly and i couldn't agree more Ray. I always looked at Sly Bailey and saw the astronomical £750,000 p/a she was earning and it made me want to puke my guts up at the paltry 13k i was getting for working all hours god sent me...So what do journalists who are fed up of it all (or who are unemployed like me) going to do about it? Any new career ideas? I'm thinking of teaching

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Observer (18/12/2008 13:49)
It warms my heart to see Newsquest being so kind and considerate at Christmas, making people worry about their livlihoods. I went through a similar process two years ago, fortunately, I was not deemed surplus to requirement. It just goes to show how precarious our positions are. On a side note, isn't it interesting to see that both Trinity Mirror and Johnstones, who put shareholders and share price first, second and third et al, have slipped out the FTSE 250. My heart bleeds for their investors. It proves, good things to come to those who wait. I was just wondering how meagre their CEO's redundacy packages will be?

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Wiltshire defender (18/12/2008 16:26)
While I understand your point, Fox, these particular papers are still a decent size, filled with off-diary events and human interest stories and they still run successful campaigns at the heart of the community. My local paper, the mulit-award winning Gazette, is still a force to be reckoned with due to the dedication and hard work of its underpaid staff. Of course, quality will suffer when half as many staff have twice as much work to do...

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m duhig (18/12/2008 16:49)
those are not the only jobs to go there are 15 in the advertising department across newsquest wiltshire!!!

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Marcus Crawley (18/12/2008 16:57)
I gave up journalism after 14 years, disillusioned by the pay and the lack of respect. The money is there in companies - as mentioned, it goes to people at the 'top' rather than those who actually do the work. Would you recommend the job to someone you know? I wouldn't......

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Moonraker (18/12/2008 21:11)
It is sad to see this happen as these are two of Newsquest's best weekly papers with distinct characters that reflect the subtle differences between the posher Kennet area and the much more working class west of the county around Trowbridge. I have been a reader of these two titles since the days when they were country broadsheets - one owned and edited by the late Michael Lansdowne the other staffed by someone of the stature of Denis Kingman. These papers are still packed with news and interesting stories (very few press releases), top class photography and the management should think again about doing this as they could be killing off the goose that lays the future golden egg.

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Fred Boycott (19/12/2008 00:27)
A former Newsquest editor comments: Both these papers (Gazette & Herald and Wiltshire Times) are top-class, great examples of news-packed/ ad-packed weeklies. They epitomise all that is good about local newspapers – all that local communities desire and deserve. They are staffed by committed, professional, enthusiastic journalists. Their popularity is supported by their impressive sales and revenue records. Newsquest Wiltshire has, at least in the past 10 years or so, been one of the best performing divisions in the country. Both weekly newspaper groups and their staff have won many prestigious journalistic and commercial awards. For many years these titles have contributed to Newsquest making millions of pounds of profit. Now the economy has taken a downturn, we learn Newsquest is to slash and burn – including, potentially, ditching a popular editor who has been in place only six months. Deputy editors, who often run the show, and others who play an integral part of the newspaper’s success are also being asked to take a hike. I remember, not that many years ago, Newsquest Wiltshire encouraging all staff to do all they could to win Investors In People status. Short memories! Surely, charity begins at home. Please, for lots of reasons, think again. Fred Boycott

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Marmite Soldier (19/12/2008 13:58)
It makes me so sad to see the likes of the G&H under so much pressure, but surely it’s indicative of the whole newspaper industry. My fulltime career has been spent in the electronics industry, one that suffers all the repercussion of recessions found in the manufacturing sector. Over 30 years it has paid the bills, but offered me far less satisfaction than my real passion as a freelancer. In some moments of reflection I would have loved to have quit electronics to go fulltime in journalism, but there’s no way on earth I could ever justify the drop in salary. Doing what you love still has to pay the bills. I consider myself an informed individual with a knowledge and interest in the newspaper business, and what I see is a frightening reliance and abuse of the journalist’s love of his job. I had no quibble when my seven years as a regular contributor to a Newsquest title was brought to a halt in the summer. It was time to pull up the drawbridge to protect those whose mortgages relied on their work. Freelancers are being replaced by bloggers and forum contributors who do the job for free, and hang the drop in standard. Once, TV informed the news-hungry over their evening tea, the radio did the job as they drove to the office and newspapers were picked at over breakfast, on the tube and over lunchtime sandwiches. Now, the web has put all three media players in direct competition with each other, and there are going to be big losers in the next few years. My best wishes for 2009 to all you real journalists out there.

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Lister (19/12/2008 14:26)
Hey Fred. Investors in People. Newquest North East too! Oh the fanfares. Oh the pages and pages of coverage. Now it's Investors in Investors - keeping the shareholders happy.

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