Three big city dailies have outsourced part of their subbing and page production operations to the Press Association, it was announced today.

The agency is to provide page production services for London’s Evening Standard and Glasgow’s Herald and Evening Times

PA’s editorial ‘Pages’ service based at Howden, East Yorkshire, is already responsible for subbing the Herald’s business pages and providing national and international news pages for the Evening Times.

Its new contract with the Newsquest-owned titles will build on this by providing a range of news and feature subbing work.

Meanwhile the agreement with the Evening Standard will cover subbing and layout for a range of commercially-led editorial pages and supplements, including recruitment and entertainment.

PA has been providing outsourced page production to the industry for over 20 years, creating 9,000 pages a week. The new partnerships will add to its customer total of 220 newspapers and magazines in the UK.

Managing director Tony Watson said: “We are delighted to have these prominent titles as customers of an increasingly important service for the industry.

“The deals are great examples of how our Pages service can be tailored to the different needs of newspaper titles. We offer the reassurance of pages produced with customers’ values, style and standards and, particularly important in the current economic climate, cost benefits made possible through economies of scale.”

Comments

happyjack (05/01/2010 12:40:01)
The accountants’ ultimate dream – one big hub in Howden, no subs anywhere else and lots of ‘cost benefits made possible through economies of scale’. Welcome to the future.

PA-ssed out (05/01/2010 15:01:47)
Funny how PA made trained subs redundant just before Christmas, isn’t it?

biter (05/01/2010 18:06:17)
Why do papers do this, such a retrograde step.
PA’s stunning mediocrity is the way ahead. (rolls eyes) (apparently)

All Subbed Out (06/01/2010 11:34:22)
So subs in North Yorkshire are going to know all London’s local place names, streets, councillors, etc, in order to spot ES literals? Clever.

Beano Bob (06/01/2010 12:59:31)
I worked for PA at their Victoria ofice back in the late 90s, early noughties. We were ofered redundancy or relocation to Howden. Howden?
I googled the place. Apparently it’s a set of traffic lights just outside Leeds.
I took the money and told them where to stick their relocation.