A weekly newspaper in Sussex is facing a backlash on Facebook after a group of paper boys and girls were issued with redundancy notices.
The Crawley News has outsourced its distribution contract to a new provider, TNT – meaning its existing distributors face the loss of their jobs.
Editor Andy Worden says the company is doing all it can to help those affected get jobs with the new contractor.
But a Facebook page entitled Boycott the Crawley News is encouraging readers to stop reading the Northcliffe-owned title.
The page was set up on 8 March and has since gained 224 ‘likes’ on the social networking site.
Its author stated: “This is a page set up to get the paper boys and girls their jobs back! They were made redundant and replaced by what seems to be adult foreigners! Another great british tradition down the pan”
The row has also spawned local radio coverage in Sussex.
John Wright, the father of one of the youngsters affected, told BBC Sussex: “Getting a redundancy letter at 15 years old is very bizarre. It’s a great work ethic for the kids. Kids have done paper rounds for hundreds of years.”
Said Andy: “We have outsourced distribution of the Crawley News to TNT who are experts in their field. This decision was not a reflection of the contractor’s performance or the distributors they employed but simply a commercial decision which is deemed necessary to meet the current needs of the business.
“We are doing everything we can to help the distributors affected to get jobs with TNT.”
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I don’t know the Crawley News but if it is a paid-for it’s hard to think of a quicker way of alienating whole families and their friends. If it is free (as is more probable) then the product will find its way into the recycling bin in far more homes far more quickly than it usually does! But the bean-counters will never know – or care – of course.
By the way, couldn’t HTFP’s newspaper listings show whether free or paid-for?
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Yes, put your local paper at risk to punish them for trying to find a cheaper delivery service.
Facebook campaigns like this simply work to show how idiotic the people who support them are.
Could have been handled better, but it’s not the journalists fault now is it?
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We now have stooped so low as to take the chance for teenagers to earn a small amount of money on a paper round.
And guess what TNT have found cheap foreign labour to exploit to fill there coffers
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Amanda – Not sure if it was aimed at me but I certainly was not blaming the journalists.
Most readers probably have little knowledge of what goes on behind the scenes and see the paper simply as an entity that attacked their children. Any good parent will put their children first in a situation like this.
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