The Welsh National Assembly's culture minister, Alun Pugh, has offered to sponsor a meeting of media unions to discuss concerns over job losses and budget cuts to the industry in Wales.

He made the offer after a Wales TUC Conference fringe meeting, Who Controls the Welsh Media.

At the meeting, Amicus national officer Steve Sibbald and National Union of Journalists deputy general secretary John Fray outlined the impact of recent cuts.

Steve described how the printing of many titles had been transferred to plants in England – and explained that while the newspaper industry was investing £1bn in new production facilities, none was earmarked for Wales.

He also flagged up the impact of the free Metro series now being circulated in the Cardiff area, claiming it was draining advertising money from other publications while offering no local journalism to the community.

He told the meeting: "The Metro will have a massive effect, not on the 'inkies' who put the ink on the paper, but the journalists who write for other papers.

"All the Northcliffe people we speak to are terrified. They are told that they will be sacked if they join a union. If there is union recognition in their plants, they fear that management will close them down and move the work somewhere else."

Linking in with the main message of the NUJ's Journalism Matters campaign, John Fray told the delegates: "When it comes to democracy, we believe that people should be well informed and part of that is good quality journalism.

"It's part of the fabric of our society that people are given good quality information. If we lose it and have a less well informed society then heaven help us."

He also catalogued the threats to broadcasters, noting ongoing cuts in jobs in the ITV regions and explained that BBC Wales had wanted to shed more than 200 jobs as part of the UK-wide cuts currently being discussed with the broadcast unions.

Alun Pugh, the Minister for Culture, Welsh Language and Sport, said two issues needed to be addressed; how the media reflected devolved politics, and how a choice of news sources was maintained in Wales.

He insisted, "the devolution penny has not dropped" in many London-based media organisations when reporting matters of public controversy, and that newspaper readers, and sometimes, viewers and listeners, might not realise that reporting on issues such as trust schools or debates on smoking bans would not apply outside England.

He also accepted that newspaper readers in Wales were much more dependent on London-based publications than readers in Scotland.

His figures showed that 85 per cent of morning papers bought in Wales were published in London. Just 15 per cent of morning papers sold in Scotland came from south of the border.