The National Union of Journalists has accused regional publisher Trinity Mirror of killing off local and regional newspapers by failing to invest in them.
Today the union issued what it is calling a ‘dossier of evidence’ showing staff cutbacks have led to journalists taking on more work, and court cases and council meetings being missed.
The move appears designed to heap pressure on Trinity Mirror chief executive Sly Bailey who is already facing a potential ‘shareholders revolt’ over her pay package, which has seen her earn more than £12.5m since 2003.
The union claim it is ‘untenable’ for Ms Bailey to remain in her role and claims Trinity’s journalists are now “spending most of their time uploading websites rather than finding and writing up stories. ”
Michelle Stanistreet, NUJ general secretary, said the dossier showed that local newspapers were having the lifeblood sucked from them and were unable to fulfil their role as a public watchdog.
One union representative from the Birmingham Post & Mail said: “Staff are increasingly going for easy stories – those which can be filed and concluded as quickly and with as little fuss as possible, from press releases and announcements with a quick reaction from the end of the phone.
“Some good, but not explosive stories are missed because we do not have production staff able to make late changes to the paper.
“We no longer routinely cover the transport authority. All this means that community or grassroots news has suffered and we are becoming increasingly reliant on reader generated news and pictures.”
A Media Wales rep said a series of redundancy announcements last summer had had a serious impact on the Celtic Weekly titles which circulate in the South Wales Valleys.
“The papers now have little more than one dedicated reporter each with much of the content given over to a cross-Valleys news section culled from the Echo, a common sports section and the dreaded ‘user generated content’,'” said the rep.
Another representative from the North West said that job cuts meant reporters having to work longer hours spending less time on each story to produce more copy.
However, on the upside the rep said the opening of satellite offices has allowed reporters to spend longer on their patch
Martin Shipton, NUJ Trinity Mirror group chapel chair said: “By wilfully damaging the quality of its own papers, the board is destroying its chance to create a sustainable business for the future.”
Trinity Mirror did not wish to comment when contacted by HTFP.
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TM are systematically killing locals and regionals. Staff levels and quality have gone down, morale through the floor. No investment, no interest from TM just more cuts and job losses
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Good effort but as Trinity Mirror doesn’t give a monkey’s about what the NUJ thinks, it’s not likely to damage the target.
Funnily enough, the legions of readers who have stopped buying their local paper have been telling TM management everything they needed to know about killing off the industry in the last ten years.
But then they don’t take much notice of them, either.
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Isn’t it a bit late in the day for the union to spot the trend? I’ve almost lost count of the rounds of redundancies on the editorial floor.
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Erm for a journos union the NUJ is not exactly on the ball … this has been happening for several years
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I’m an ex TM hack but jumped ship years ago. To be fair though, it’s not just TM and it’s not just local papers, the nationals are also going for the ‘quick’ stories.
Buy three papers on any one day and the only differences will be the bylines and the fonts, everything else will be more or less the same.
In that sense, the locals are not doing as bad as there are still a few honourable exceptions which still cover court, councils etc but that is becoming much more rare as time goes on.
The thing I see is not so much the owners, but it’s the journalists themselves who can’t be bothered digging out stories because they are either lazy and see it as a stepping stone to the nationals, or they don’t know the patch so don’t know what stories to dig out, something which has been increasing in recent years.
Journalism has never been well paid and hacks have always had to go above and beyond to deliver the goods. That was the case in the 70s and is still the case today.
But I’m afraid, by and large, the attitude of journalists has changed. They just don’t seem interested in reporting anymore, they just like the idea of calling themselves a reporter. As I say, there are a few honourable exceptions but those are the ones who tend to carry the rest.
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This is by no means limited to TM. I work for Newsquest and would love the chance to present a ‘dossier of evidence’ showing the impact their cutbacks have had. It’s all rather sad.
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Sly darling, I have a Ford Escort that’s just made for you. L-Reg with just 15,000 miles on the clock. It’s yellow with a black vinyl roof and even has an eight-track player.
If you want I’ll do a swap; you have the car and I’ll have what’s left of your local newspaper protfolio.
You’ll obviously have to make up the difference with some cash.
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Totally disagree with you, Grumpy. The vast majority of reporters I encounter are focused and hard-working, but are these days expected to churn out far more copy than when I carried a notebook.
I believe the problem goes back 15-20 years when record year-on-year profits were expected and little attention was paid to what was actually generating those profits.
Now cutting back, rather than investment (including in digital), is the norm. The danger is that eventually there will be nothing left to cut back, there will be nothing left to sell and ALL profits will dry up.
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The same thing has been happening with Archant for the past 5 years. Once profitable little local papers have been swallowed up by their bigger sister papers and have either folded or been left in the hands of a single inexperienced reporter, all for the sake of shareholder’s profits.
But it is also partly true what grumpy says. Many reporters I have worked with are using the position to either get into magazines or pr and have absolutely no desire to report actual news, they do not have that journalistic instinct in them. Those that do are often ignored or dissuaded from pursuing potentially interesting leads as the story would be too involved and would require too many extra hours to cover it properly.
A lot of the problem lies with editors.. Too many don’t have the balls to stand up to the management and tell them what the paper needs and which direction it needs to go. Too many editors ARE management, the rest are in fear for their jobs.
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Management have forgotten the truism that “content is king.” Skeleton staffs can’t be out at courts and councils; they are in their editorial ‘hubs’ churning out press releases.
The pay that newspaper chief executives like Sly Bailey receive is, of course, obscene and removes them from the reality of their staff’s workload and their readers’ struggling lives.
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