All three Northcliffe daily titles in the East Midlands are likely to move to overnight printing as a result of plans to close the printing press at Leicester, HoldtheFrontPage has learned.

Proposals to close the Leicester plant were unveiled earlier this week as part of the wider announcement about the creation of centralised subbing hubs in Nottingham and Hull.

It will leave Stoke and Derby as the only Northcliffe centres in the Midlands and North with printing facilities, following the closure of the Grimsby plant last year.

The company’s four North-East titles – the Hull Daily Mail, Grimsby Telegraph, Scunthorpe Telegraph and Lincolnshire Echo – are already printed overnight and now the Leicester Mercury, Nottingham Evening Post and Derby Evening Telegraph are set to follow.

Midlands regional editor Malcolm Pheby said: “We are still in consultation about the closure of the plant but a possible consequence of closure is that we could be moving to overnight printing. There is no question of that.

“We are looking at the possibility of closing the Leicester plant and if that plan goes ahead it will affect the capacity of our remaining plants.”

Mr Pheby, who is also editor of the Nottingham Evening Post, added that it was likely the currently two-edition Post would move to a single early edition if the plan went ahead.

The Derby Evening Telegraph already publishes one morning edition, printed overnight, and an evening edition, but it too is likely to move to a single edition.

One further possible consequence of the move would be that both the Derby Evening Telegraph and the Nottingham Evening Post would drop the “evening” from their names.

It is unclear whether Northcliffe’s other Midlands daily, The Sentinel, Stoke, will also move to overnight printing.

The four North-East titles, previously printed at Grimsby, are all currently printed overnight at either Derby or Leicester.

Hull Daily Mail editor and North-East regional editor John Meehan said the move to overnight printing in Derby had improved the quality of the paper.

“I am comfortable with the decision we made to move to overnight publishing. I feel things have worked well,” he said.

“My personal view on timed editions is that they used to be relevant when we could only update the news agenda in print, but now we can update our website several times an hour.”

Comments

David (26/02/2009 09:29:50)
The end of an error.

Sheil (26/02/2009 09:58:58)
Good to know those leading the sinking ships are “comfortable” with old news and throwing talent on the scrapheap. And those who prefer to read their not-so-local news away from the computer or blackberry presumably don’t matter either?

James (26/02/2009 10:08:01)
It’s strange. Print local news has always sold. But I just cannot see online local news being a success. How these local news websites are going to make money, I don’t know. There is no difference, profit wise, than a blogger who gets a 100,000 hits and a once large local newspaper’s website gettting 100,000 hits. The journalism market has been flattened.

Bill Gates (26/02/2009 10:53:37)
Local newspapers are dying because they were reluctant to jump on the Internet gravy train in the first place. I recall the industry scoffed at this ‘fad’, believing it would never catch on. By the time we finally accepted the web as a proper medium to deliver local news, valuable years were wasted in trying to make it just as profitable as papers. We are now paying the penalty for taking the arrogant belief newspapers would be here to stay. It’s ok saying “we can update our website several times an hour” but who is paying for the service? Nobody because the punters can log on and read it for free. While that continues to be the case, paper sales will always decline and the industry will have yet another letter chiselled on its tombstone. It will only stop until the top execs in advertising and editorial can find ways to maximise profits from the web. That is all.

Midlands mourning hack (26/02/2009 12:04:35)
They should take a look at papers like the Argus at Brighton. Once a wonderful paper as the Evening Argus with several lively editions before 5pm it is now a just a “not bad” morning paper with only one edition covering the whole of Sussex.
No doubt its threadbare staff work their socks off but papers like these are reporting “yesterday” stale news already done on radio, television and internet. Even the weeklies, although just as desperate for staff, beat them to stories.
Forget the management “bull”. Morning papers are a sign of desperation not progress.
But hey, cheer up. We ARE still working (at least at the time of writing).

another hack (26/02/2009 12:22:25)
Midlands mourning – we can do analysis much better than Sky, so why don’t we??

Insider B (26/02/2009 12:47:47)
What is missing from this story is that these publications will also be free

Emma (27/02/2009 11:47:31)
I have worked in local newspapers for the past eight years and found the continual cut backs thoroughly depressing.
When will newspaper bosses realise they are killing off their own product by cost cutting making it poorer with each “innovative improvement”?
It may be challenging times for local newspapers, which is exactly why they need to be made better than ever before – not worse.
Pleasing shareholders short term is short sighted and unsustainable. Bosses need to actually spend some money on improving the product to attract new readers.

exhack (09/04/2009 09:17:15)
Evening papers have always been pretty much put to bed the night before anyway but at this rate it won’t be long before the Post and others become bi- or tri- weekly at best. I have had moments in past 7 years of really missing being a news journo – the huge buzz of breaking an exclusive right on deadline, subs screaming for copy, or of getting out on your patch on a whim, speaking to all and sundry to dig up a page lead and stumbling upon a real gem of a story (are Post journalists allowed out anymore or do they just trawl blogs, facebook and other sites for news leads?) – but right now v glad to be out of such a morale-sapping, unhappy industry. Good luck to all at the Post, may you find a way to continue to matter