Front-line reporters are to be spared from the proposed job cuts at two regional dailies in Norfolk, it has emerged.

As reported on HoldtheFrontPage on Friday, Archant Norfolk is axing 54 out of 179 jobs at the Eastern Daily Press, Norwich Evening News and associated weeklies and websites.

But according to the National Union of Journalists, none of the 45 news reporters employed by the company will be included in the forthcoming redundancy process except for chief reporters and their deputies.

It means that 54 job cuts will have to come from remaining staff – a proportion of more than one in three.

NUJ chapel committee spokesman Pete Kelley said staff were first made aware of potential job losses in November when an editorial review was announced and staff were asked to fill in time-sheets for a week to record their daily tasks.

“We thought possibly 20 to 30 might be affected but the scale of the announcement has left everybody stunned,” he said.

“These are hard times for the newspaper industry. That’s understood. But to put it in context Trinity Mirror has made 13pc of its workforce redundant since January 2008. In the same time, Johnston Press has cut staff by 12pc.

“Down the road, our Archant colleagues at Ipswich are in the process of redundancies affecting nearly one in five. All of these are bad enough, but we fail to understand the disproportionate scale of the cuts here.”

The union has called a chapel meeting for later today at which industrial action will be considered.

Archant Norfolk has made clear that as it is now in a consultation process on the proposals there will be no further statements until this is completed.

Comments

A Reporter (09/03/2009 12:51:38)
This is not strictly true as chief reporters and their deputies (i.e. some of the company’s most experienced “frontline” reporters) are on the list of jobs at risk.

exworker (09/03/2009 14:33:50)
As an ex employee who still is in touch with current workers, there are even more jobs to go soon. This will include production staff, though its unlikely to make such a big news story as NUJ jobs. Archant is slashing jobs left right and centre and appears to just be focusing on profits, fair enough but by centralising everything they will also loose there “localness” upon which their business has been built!

Newshound (09/03/2009 15:31:02)
Ex worker!!!!
“Loose there localness”. You mean “lose their localness”.
Thank God for subs, is all I can say.
Every day is another chance for us to rescue the English language from massacre.

Miss Cynical (09/03/2009 16:24:18)
I accept that people often make mistakes in spelling/grammar on this site. But to endlessly highlight this does not actually achieve anything.
Well done – you can spell. So can many teachers, doctors, lawyers etc. It’s nothing special.
In the current ruthless climate, to position yourself as a ‘guardian of English superhero’ seems rather silly.
Let’s look away from minor typos/errors and concentrate on the big picture here!

old EDP man (09/03/2009 16:57:50)
Miss Cynical, Newshound’s point is far from “silly” in this context. What Archant is doing is cutting subs jobs and getting reporters to effectively write their stories into page-ready copy boxes. So the risk of factual errors, bad spelling, typos & legals getting through the net is vastly increased – though some people seem not to care.

Glad to be out (09/03/2009 17:33:41)
@ Newshound – the story here is that one in three non editorial jobs are going in Norwich. Has it ever occurred to you that some of the comments here just might be are posted by people other than the editorial elite?

Mr D. Brent (09/03/2009 18:02:57)
old EDP man – you sound quite pedantic for a individual who writes of the possibility of ‘legals’ making their way into reporters’ copy. What are legals exactly?
Prat.

old EDP man (09/03/2009 18:16:36)
Mr D Brent, to enlighten you; “legals” is the colloquial term used in newspapers to refer to libels or other mistakes of a legal nature getting into copy. And if by “pedantic”, you mean that I appear to care about accuracy and getting things right rather than wrong, then guilty as charged. And why the need to add a pathetic, childish insult? what’s the matter, can’t make an eloquent argument without resorting to silly names?

richard meredith (10/03/2009 14:11:12)
Dear HTFP, is this yesterday’s story today (the 10th)? Not sure I follow your maths either – but no matter: the crucial point is that if Archant really are marking journo jobs as top priority then all of us should bless them for seeing sense. Murdoch said it on TV again last night, and all sane shareholders should think the same …we need to produce BETTER papers now, not worse, because unless we can keep our readers’ loyalty, there will be nothing to come back to after all the blood-letting is over.