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Newsagents hit out at Johnston Press changes

Representatives of local newsagents are demanding an urgent meeting with Johnston Press boss Ashley Highfield over his plans to turn five daily newspapers into weeklies.

The Northampton Chronicle and Echo, Northants Evening Telegraph, Peterborough Evening Telegraph, Halifax Courier and Scarborough Evening News are all due to switch to weekly publication on 28 May.

But the National Federation of Retail Newsagents, which claims to account for 30pc of newspaper sales, condemned the newspaper publisher for the move.

It says the plans will hit local communities as well as impacting on local newsagents and their delivery staff.

National president Kieran McDonnell said:  “Local newspapers are an essential part of community life.  They are the fabric of their towns and villages and we cannot allow such a vital source of local information to disappear.

“This is yet another assault by Johnson Press on the livelihoods of local news retailers. Moving these five titles from daily to weekly publication represents a potential loss of 420,000 copies a week. This will have a massive impact on the revenues of hard working newsagents as millions of pounds are wiped out of the retail market.”

“That’s not all.  Delivering evening newspapers is, for many teenagers, their first taste of work. With these five papers now set to appear on a weekly basis only, thousands of young newsboys and girls could find themselves out of a job.

“For all these reasons the NFRN is demanding an urgent meeting with Mr Highfield.

The NFRN was already up in arms with JP over a decision to raise the price of the Saturday edition of the Yorkshire Post by 10p without passing on the same margin to retailers

Johnston Press has not so far responded to requests for a comment.

7 comments

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  • April 27, 2012 at 2:09 pm
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    Has Ashley HighProfile got any friends anywhere?

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  • April 27, 2012 at 2:50 pm
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    Of course they haven’t responded to requests for a comment. They don’t care what you think

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  • April 27, 2012 at 3:22 pm
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    Not the NFRN!! Gosh, how much can the man take, can he cope with these bruisers on top of everything else? The NFRN is as much use as the NUJ in standing up for it’s members!

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  • April 27, 2012 at 3:28 pm
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    If you had a business that was losing money and needed to find ways to save cash, would you then consider the needs of other businesses and the impact of your decision on them, or would you sort yourself out first? Exactly. And that’s what JP is doing.

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  • April 27, 2012 at 4:07 pm
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    Incredible, what do you expect Johnston press to do? pander to your needs and the needs of paper boys/girls?

    JP need to sort their own house out and if local government want to assist in aiding local press instead of hindering then maybe just maybe these titles could again one day be dailies?

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  • April 27, 2012 at 4:09 pm
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    “This is yet another assault by Johnson Press on the livelihoods of local news retailers”

    Why don’t you be proactive then? why don’t you sell those papers at a rate of 0% commission for 6 months? no? didn’t think so!

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