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Midlands publisher merges daily and weekly teams

Daily and weekly news reporters at a West Midlands publisher are being merged into a single team, it has been confirmed.

The Shropshire Star and its sister weeklies are joining forces in a bid to cut down on duplication and offer readers “more local content.”

Titles affected include the Hereford Journal, Newport Advertiser, Shrewsbury Chronicle, Telford Journal and Oswestry & Border Chronicle.

Until now they have had separate staffs but bosses at the Midland News Association-owned titles say they were often working on the same stories.

Shropshire Star editor Keith Harrison said:  “I’m hoping that working as part of a bigger team will ease the pressure on reporters, particularly those working in some of our smaller district offices.

“Their copy can already be accessed across all MNA titles, so this is a way of cutting down on duplication of work, increasing efficiency and offering readers more local content.

“Instead of weekly and daily reporters in the districts sitting in different offices in the same building, sometimes working on exactly the same stories, they will now work alongside each other.

“There will still be exclusive content for the weeklies and there’s been a positive reaction from weekly editors and the Shropshire Star newsdesk.

Keith added that the weekly and daily subs will also combine, offering extra subbing capacity for both sets of titles throughout the week.

15 comments

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  • October 26, 2011 at 9:50 am
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    As if Keith Harrison spoke to someone?!

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  • October 26, 2011 at 10:15 am
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    I don’t know how Keith Harrison kept a straight face when he proffered the management mantra of “improving efficiency”. If that had been the case it would have been done years ago.

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  • October 26, 2011 at 10:29 am
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    most dailies read like weeklies now they have gone to morning publication instead of same-day and are cruelly under-staffed so can’t see it makes a lot of difference.
    The way paper circulation is being killed off we shall all be writing just for web sites soon.

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  • October 26, 2011 at 11:45 am
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    Still be exclusives for the weeklies? Not in my experience. When the daily paper news ed gets desperate he will plunder! I have seen it happen and it pees off weekly reporters big-time.

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  • October 26, 2011 at 2:09 pm
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    More redundancies coming out of there very soon, methinks…

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  • October 26, 2011 at 2:48 pm
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    The decline in newspapers in the UK has not come at the hands of the world wide web as we were warned 15 years ago or more. The newspaper bosses have led the charge. Why can’t they be honest? Improving efficiency? Ha. What about, we have to cut costs?
    Readers have voted with their feet. So have advertisers.
    Woeful newspaper websites have done little to stem the tide.

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  • October 26, 2011 at 4:37 pm
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    Sounds like common sense to me. Why have two reporters in adjoining offices working on the same story? If that’s not improving efficiency, what is?? @onthefence: they probably didn’t do it years ago because they didn’t have to…

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  • October 26, 2011 at 5:47 pm
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    Stillglad . . . they didn’t have to because they sold papers to people queuing up to read that day’s “real” news and not re-hashed handouts, and companies were prepared to pay premium rates to advertise. Ah . . . what it was wonderful to be so inefficient!

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  • October 27, 2011 at 11:09 am
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    Just wait for for the “new contracts” to be offered to anyone who stays. You know, the ones where evening newspaper hacks take a pay cut to bring them in line with their weekly colleagues…………….beware!

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  • October 27, 2011 at 11:39 am
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    “On the fence” is spot on.
    People don’t want to buy the stale dross that is in the local morning papers.
    Proper news-driven dailies used to offer the latest news, fresh and in some cases three editions a day. Now it’s tired old material and follow-ups from the local weekly.
    No fault of reporters- there are just are not enough of them to cover the ground properly. I should know. I am one of them.

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  • October 27, 2011 at 11:55 am
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    Scooped: your last sentence is spot on. And what will happen in Ketley very, very soon is that flush of extra talent they now think they’ve got will be whittled away until the weeklies become mere freesheets stuffed with cut-and-paste from the previous week’s Shropshire Stars. Perhaps with an exclusive front page lead, but that’s it. It’s the way many subsidiary free weeklies are treated.

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  • November 1, 2011 at 2:53 pm
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    Jobs already going at Shropshire Star. People with over a quarter century experience, given the boot. It will not work. Because ‘good’ ideas at the Shropshire Star come from the less than able who should have been put to grass years ago.

    One problem is that they could never work out if it was a local paper with some national and international news, or a national daily with a smattering of local news when they could find a bit of space for it. Pity.

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  • November 2, 2011 at 12:10 pm
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    Matt: I think that problem was caused by the terrible story count burden and the deadlines for six editions. There was a dedicated national news page but if the edition, especially an early edition, had holes in its local pages it had to be filled with something, and PA bits was it. Time was every local evening newspaper did it this way – then they discovered that the public didn’t like it!

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  • November 2, 2011 at 3:23 pm
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    This is the death knell for all the weekly papers in the S Star’s area. Who will want to buy them to read cut n paste jobs from the Star the week before.
    I’m ‘gladtobeoutofit too.’

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