A regional daily newspaper will switch to weekly publication in January with the loss of around six editorial jobs, Trinity Mirror has announced today.
The Liverpool Daily Post will become The Liverpool Post and will be published every Thursday from the New Year as a 100-page bumper edition.
The 156-year-old title becomes the fifth regional daily to go weekly in the past three months and the first outside the Northcliffe Media stable.
Northcliffe blazed the trail for what many see as a potential way forward for the industry this summer by taking the Torquay Herald Express, Scunthorpe Telegraph, Exeter Express & Echo and Lincolnshire Echo to weekly publication.
The LDP has long been tipped by industry pundits, including HoldtheFrontPage blogger and former Trinity Mirror editor Steve Dyson, as a likely contender to go weekly.
In the most recent ABC figures published in August, it recorded a year-on-year circulation decrease of 2.1pc to stand at an average daily sale of 8,217 – smaller than all four of the Northcliffe dailies-turned-weeklies.
Trinity Mirror has also announced that four free Liverpool weekly titles are to be merged into two new community newspapers.
The Bootle Times, Maghull and Aintree Star and Anfield Star will become The Star and will be available within the Tuesday edition of the Liverpool Echo alongside Merseymart.
Daily Post editor Mark Thomas said: “We are lucky to be custodians of one of the great brands in journalism and we’ve been serving our city for 156 years.
“This change sets us up to serve it for the next 156 – in print and online and through whichever channels readers seek to receive it.
“We’ve just completed research which proves yet again how much people like and want our current content mix.
“However, we appreciate that the world is changing and people’s buying habits and news consumption requirements are very different.
“There is clear evidence that a bumper Post once a week, full of high-quality news, views and analysis, will be better for readers and a more appealing vehicle for advertisers.
“This move enables us to maximise brand potential in what are extraordinarily challenging times for the media industry and for business in general.”
He added: “We realise there will be many Post followers who will still want a daily update on the news. We will make sure that they get that through our website www.liverpooldailypost.co.uk which will update all news with our usual special emphasis on business, sport, the arts, and politics.
“We are also working on exciting new plans for developing the website further.”
The company said the change will have no impact on the Liverpool Echo but was expected to result in the loss of approximately six editorial jobs.
Managing Director of Trinity Mirror North West & North Wales, Warren Butcher, said: “We recognise that the proposed changes are fundamental and that they affect long-lived and much-loved brands.
“However, a change in approach is vital. Our business has been built on the ability to be proactive and to continually adapt our portfolio to reflect market conditions and changing consumer trends.
“We are convinced these changes will strengthen and add greater relevance to our portfolio in the long term and in turn improve the service we provide to both readers and advertisers.”
The National Union of Journalists has condemned the move and called it a ‘national tragedy.’
Chris Morley, NUJ Northern and Midlands Organiser, said: “This is the latest in a string of grim redundancy announcements by Trinity Mirror. Turning the Liverpool Daily Post into a weekly is a real gamble by the company with a title that has a prestigious history of publishing.
“As a union, we remain to be convinced that this format is likely to be a successful way forward in Britain’s big cities.
“Trinity Mirror has already carried out a similar operation with the Birmingham Post some two years ago but the jury is still out on the impact on circulation.”
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Presumably, the North Wales edition of the Daily Post, long the most successful, will continue as a daily ?
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The sales figures aren’t important, it’s revenue that counts. Yes, the ad rates are affected by sales figures, but I think you’ll see a lot bigger daily papers turn weekly next year as it’s all about money. Think about it, if you had a daily that sold 10,000 copies a day that was making £1m a year and another daily that sold 50,000 copies a day and lost £1m a year, which business would you make changes to first?
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The Welsh Daily Post is staying six-days-a-week which is good to see.
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Trinity Mirror did exactly the same as it did with the Birmingham Post – turned a wide-ranging regional late-deadline morning paper into an incredibly narrowly-targeted city-focussed paper with a very limited target audience (business readers) and saw its circulation plummet.
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“Last week Trinity Mirror flatly denied NUJ claims that it plans to turn The Western Mail into a weekly.” HTTP 23/11/11
For the moment !
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By my reckoning that is the 4th news headline since last Friday that included the word “axe” – not a good week for the regional press or the Alternative Headline Writers Guild.
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“Our business has been built on the ability to be proactive and to continually adapt our portfolio to reflect market conditions and changing consumer trends.”
That’s a laugh. I think we’ve found that those in charge of newspaper businesses have been RE-ACTIVE as opposed to PRO-ACTIVE. That’s part of the reason we’re in the state we’re in.
A pro-active business would have took action regarding drops in sales and developing a sustainable online model for its titles LONG AGO.
A pro-active business would not have waited for sales to drop to 11,648 a day before deciding that going weekly from daily was the best thing to do. This has nothing to do with being good for journalism and everything to do with being good for the balance sheet.
And anyway, who is going to buy a week-old Liverpool Post when the Echo already serves the city very well (certainly the copies I’ve read) as a daily? This is the first step towards closure which will come naturally through people not buying the damn thing.
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Reporter makes an interesting point. The Post already runs completely identical news stories to the Echo on a daily basis — for the most part not even bothering so much as to change the intros. It is bad enough state of affairs as it is, and certainly won’t wash once it coverts to a weekly.
It will need unique hard news content to be of any interest or relevance at all, but where will this come from with six or seven less staff? Not to mention management who simply do not prioritise the title and are unlikely to start now. As long as the newsdesk remains pooled, any decent exclusive story found for the Post is sure to be poached for the Echo.
As ever, the people making apologies for this should be ashamed. The treatment of the paper and its staff is once again simply beyond contempt.
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Is Trinity Mirror going to the wall I wonder? Constant cuts, inability to break even, huge debts, no tangible assets as they’ve all been sold off, little prospect of growth…
It might happen sooner than you might think.
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Reporter is right. Newspaper publishers tend to be reactive rather than pro-active. The jigsaw is gradually coming together …stand by for the announcement of a major national merger before Christmas.
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I was an apprentice compositor/linotype operator on the Daily Post back in the late 50’s/early 60’s and it was a superb example of a daily broadsheet regional paper with the correct mix of international, national and local news, usually in that order. I have watched its decline ever since it was sold to Trinity Mirror. I bought a copy earlier this year and was dismayed to find it was a cross between a local weekly free sheet and a company house newspaper. It was even laid out like a company publication. Very sad, particularly for the people losing their jobs.
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