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Regionals boss Harvey out in Trinity Mirror restructure

The head of Trinity Mirror’s regional division Georgina Harvey is to leave the company in a restructure that will see its national and regional titles brought under a single boss.

Georgina, who was president of the Newspaper Society last year, leaves along with managing director, commercial Sara Wilde and director of corporate communications Nick Fullagar.

The restructure sees Mark Hollinshead heading up the combined national and regionals division as chief operating officer, in a bid to create what the company is terming “One Trinity Mirror.”

Mark will be paid a salary of £375,000 a year plus a bonus entitlement of up to 281,250, of which half would be payable in cash and the rest in shares.

Trinity is also closing its daily deals business Happli after just seven months, saying it is unlikely to achieve sufficient scale to become profitable.

The business was launched in March this year with £10m of investment including a national advertising campaign and revenues had been forecast to reach £20m by 2014.

Today’s announcements are the first significant changes to be made by new Trinity chief executive Simon Fox since he took over from Sly Bailey.

He said: “It has very quickly been confirmed to me that Trinity Mirror is a business with great brands, passionate and dedicated people and significant unrealised potential.

“What has become clear in my first few weeks is that realising this potential requires a flatter and more efficient management structure that connects strategic decision making more closely with the journalistic heart of the business.

“I believe the changes we are making today will create One Trinity Mirror with a unique portfolio of national and regional brands and the best structure from which to develop our longer term strategic direction. I will provide a strategic update in early 2013.”

A company statement said:  “The nationals and regionals divisions will be unified under one management structure thereby ensuring that editorial, advertising and support functions can operate as effectively as possible across all of the group’s print and digital publishing operations. This will enable an accelerated rollout of digital products across our portfolio to drive revenues.

“The consolidated publishing operations will be managed by Mark Hollinshead, who is today appointed to the newly created position of chief operating  officer and as an executive director of Trinity Mirror plc.

“Digital product development and the specialist digital businesses (Recruitment, Property and Digital Marketing Services) as well as the group’s contract printing operations will now be separately managed and report directly into the CEO.

“These changes allow a flatter, more efficient management structure to be adopted.

“As a consequence of this new management structure, Georgina Harvey, managing director – regionals and Nick Fullagar, director of corporate communications will be leaving the business.

“They have both made an important and valued contribution to the group for which the Board is enormously grateful.

“The Group is also announcing its intention to close Happli, the recently launched daily deals business.  It is considered that the business is unlikely to reach sufficient scale to become profitable in the near term.

“We will now enter into a period of consultation with staff working in the business.”

16 comments

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  • October 15, 2012 at 9:04 am
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    The phrase ‘what goes around comes around’ has never been more apt.

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  • October 15, 2012 at 9:15 am
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    Following the demise of Sly, it was only a matter of time before Harvey would be shown the door.

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  • October 15, 2012 at 9:26 am
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    Maybe, as journalists, we should remember that gloating never looks nice. Regardless of what you think about those going, and what they did while working, at the end of the day they are people. Grown ups would rise above the urge to gloat.

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  • October 15, 2012 at 9:50 am
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    ‘One Trinity Mirror, there’s only one Trinity Mirror…..’

    Good luck to him in trying to ”connect strategic decision-making more closely with the journalistic heart of the business.” It’s been getting ever more distant from it for the last two decades.

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  • October 15, 2012 at 10:31 am
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    As a TM employee this a encouraging.

    In the main our websites and digital strategies are a mess. Each paper does its own thing meaning some areas have really good web coverage while for some it is non-existent.

    My boss for one is very much from the old school who likes to save as much as possible for the paper despite the fact sales have been tumbling for years.

    The websites themselves are awful to navigate so new, fresher ones will be welcome.

    While he talks about getting to the heart of journalism I still think that in the New Year we will see a major shake up of the news rooms.

    I think middle tier editorial employees (news/content editors) will be phased out to make way for more employees answering to a deputy/editor and a digital editor.

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  • October 15, 2012 at 10:37 am
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    “Maybe, as journalists, we should remember that gloating never looks nice.”

    As a layman, I find the above piety hilarious.

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  • October 15, 2012 at 10:52 am
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    The Liverpool Echo website is an abomination, can anybody tell me who’s responsible for this cluttered labyrinth?
    It’s like MySpace circa 2005.

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  • October 15, 2012 at 11:09 am
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    Many good,hardworking people at Trinity Mirror have lost their jobs for a ‘more efficient management structure’ under Sly and Geogina’s time at the company. I do not consider it is gloating…just Karma.

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  • October 15, 2012 at 11:47 am
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    Bernard is right, ‘gloating’ isn’t a very attractive response when someone has lost their job. But there are a lot of people in this company relieved that the one dimensional, remote, cost cutting regime of the Bailey/Harvey years is finally at an end. Maybe ‘rejoicing’ is a better word than ‘gloating’.

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  • October 15, 2012 at 12:06 pm
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    He’s a sly one that Fox. Didn’t take him long to work things out.

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  • October 15, 2012 at 1:16 pm
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    Redpostman … Do you actually work for trinity mirror? You always have an opinion on what goes on and it’s never good. I always try to get out if I hate working somewhere. Maybe you should too?

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  • October 15, 2012 at 4:43 pm
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    Just under what the payoff was ? Nearly a mil I expect !!

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  • October 15, 2012 at 4:56 pm
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    Naked Thinker – I did work there, for nearly 20 years. It wasn’t my decision to leave.

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  • October 16, 2012 at 1:13 pm
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    The jury’s still out on Fox. He’s ditched the £10m lame duck he inherited from Sly so at least he’s decisive.
    Is he interested in Newsquest at a knock-down price? It would be a bold show of faith in the future of the regional media.

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  • October 19, 2012 at 4:05 pm
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    I wish her well. It must have been a really difficult job, managing self-ish ingrates who believe that a job is an entitlement. TM, for all its faults, showed many regional publishers that they can be run as businesses and not the quaint family concerns of old.

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