A regional publisher which recently axed meal allowances for its journalists has reported a near-200pc rise in operating profits.
HTFP reported last week that the Midland News Association, which publishes the Express & Star and Shropshire Star, has scrapped meal allowances for staff members, while also putting a company holiday home used by staff up for sale.
Now it has emerged in the company’s accounts for 2012 that its operating profit rose to £2m, up from £0.7m for the previous year.
The figures also show the company’s wage bill fell by £1.8m as the number of employees dropped 15pc to 690, with £900,000 paid out in severance payments to staff.
Chris Morley, Northern & Midlands Organiser for the National Union of Journalists, said: “The scrapping of meals allowances for many MNA staff under the threat of dismissal and re-engagement was a bitter pill to swallow.
“But now we find out that last year the company did well with a 200pc rise in operating profits to £2m – despite spending £900,000 on redundancies and with the number of employees consequently falling heavily.
“And with one director racking in £191,000 when the overall pay bill for the company went down by £1.8m, it seems those at the top are out of touch with the effect the starvation of editorial resources has and how that impacts on journalists.
“MNA journalists are proud of the professional job they do in the face of adversity but that cannot be taken for granted for ever.”
The union has also raised concerns about the long hours being worked by journalists but Chris said that an attempt for talks with the company about the issue was rejected.
The Midland News Association has declined to comment.
Sign up for our free daily email bulletin
Follow HTFP on Twitter
Got a story? Email the Editor at
The more things change the more they stay the same!
Will we ever see the day when a Director is driving a Ford Ka?
No way!
£191,000 salary and yet journalists’ meal allowance scrapped?
Unbelievable.
Report this comment
The profits are only because of the cutbacks, but if you do that for too much longer the quality of the product will always suffer, meaning less people buy it and you have to make more cuts again.
Makes you laugh their directors are paid £191,000 yet they can’t even manage to comment.
Report this comment
Holiday homes, meal allowances, director on £191k – spoilt staff at this company seem to have been living in a different world to everybody else!
Report this comment
Axing the meal allowance is hardly the way to provide an incentive to journalists.
Report this comment
The managing director of the small group of five profitable weekly newspapers for which I worked in the late 1960s told me (and I have every reason to believe that he was telling the truth) that he was paid £3,500 a year.
This figure was roughly three and a half times my salary as chief reporter working for two of the titles. It seemed like a vast gulf to me at the time. He seemed happy with his rewards, which allowed him to have an up-market car, an attractive house in an expensive area, and other trappings of success.
On this basis the Midland News Association directors should be earning three and a half times the average salary of a regional daily reporter. What is that – somewhere between £25,000 and £30,000?
Is such greed in the newspaper business a modern development?
Report this comment
Is this a recruitment drive for the union ? There is no strong presence at the MNA. Pathetic attempt really.
All daily newspapers are seeing falling circulations, with an increase in decline year on year. Advertising revenue is following eyeballs, which clearly aren’t reading newspapers.
Reality check, newspapers are in the business of making a profit, if they don’t then there will be no newspapers.
So newspapers need to cut costs to match revenues or close down.
Report this comment
This happened in the rest of the industry years ago. MNA employees have been cushioned from what the rest have us have already gone through, now its happening to them. Not saying its good at all but be grateful the benefits lasted so long.
Report this comment
When I was FoC at the Birmingham Post & Mail – a post later held by Chris Morley – I battled tirelessly to get meals allowances, Bank Holiday payments and a whole raft of other ‘extras’ consolidated into basic pay. The chapel committee took the view that this move would make it impossible for the management to axe them. Passing on this negotiating tactic sadly comes too late for my colleagues at the Express & Star – but I commend it to other chapels before they too fall victim to their selfish and miserly bosses.
Report this comment
If you went straight from work to be stuck in a dull council meeting till midnight, most newspaper companies used to be of the view that it was only fair to repay you the cost of buying some basic food and drink.
Over-paid directors, however, have never understood the need to claim meal allowances as they just bung all that stuff onto the company’s gold credit card.
Ain’t life grand?
Report this comment
With cutbacks throughout the industry, why do these particular journalists need an “incentive”? Off topic, (and as a non-journalist/writer) I am alarmed at the use of “less” and not fewer and “different world to” and not from.
Report this comment
To be honest, I thought meal payments had died out in the 90s but looking back over 44 years as a working journalist it is clear that the respect that companies had for their editorial staff has now almost evaporated, and that is, to put it mildly, a great shame.
Report this comment
JP Cost Cut Victim, I’d hardly call receiving £3 for a supermarket meal deal an “incentive”.
It is more of the principle. You already work outside your contracted hours. You already work for less than the 17-year-old who works at the local pawn shop. You already take on work that was once that of two people ten years ago.
Give it a few years and journalists will be required to have their own laptops and mobiles to save papers buying equipment.
Report this comment
I was a former MNA daily reporter and the journalists are paid lower than other publishers to begin with. I moved from a well known publish on a weekly and was on exactly the same as a daily reporter there. No offence to the delivery drivers but they were paid more than the reporters too!
12 hour shifts were a regular occurence, as were being ordered to evening meetings as you were about to get up and leave for the day hours after shifts ended anyway, and like at a lot of places, working every weekend because of FEWER staff being employed.
I didn’t even know there was a holiday home so it’s obviously only something that senior staff go to use!
Report this comment
I would like to call on HTFP to lead a campaign against the wall of silence persistently put up by our large publishers. Yet again we have ‘declined to comment’ on a news story. We are in an industry in which we get very aggrieved if people don’t talk to us yet time and time again our editors and owners are silent when asked for a response. How can we expect others to talk to the media when were are totally incapable of doing it ourselves? It’s pathetic.
Report this comment
Seems Union Recruiter, Dreamland has taken the management line but I agree with him on the need to nurture circulation. The fact is MNA is certainly not helping its own cause on this. I understand that there used to be more than 20 city centre vendors in Wolverhampton alone – now there is 3. I live in the core circulation area but often find my newsagent sold out after 7pm as not enough are supplied. Birmingham – a next door city of 1 million – is all but ignored. The NUJ supports strong journalism but out of touch managers need to have the impact of their cuts brought home to them in every way possible.
Report this comment
@Union recruiter – are you a director by any chance?
Making a profit is fair enough but its short-sighted to think that all these cuts won’t affect profit in the long run. If you don’t reward your staff, the good journalists who sell you newspapers, and they don’t feel valued or motivated then it will be the content and the sales that suffer.
Report this comment
We had our meal allowance scrapped about ten years ago. And, about fifty years back the Coventry Evening Telegraph had a couple of holiday cottages for staff. Up until 20 years ago we also had our own sports ground and social club.
I think MNA staff should be rejoicing that they’ve held on to the luxuries that the rest of us have had to live without for so long.
Report this comment
Richie, Leicester – I quoted “incentive” from a previous post. Roughly £60 a month for meals though simply highlights how much the rest of us are/were shelling out for lunch and not appreciating how much we were spending! I can appreciate that staff are now taking on twice as much work and in many cases these days, work that differs from what they were initially employed to do, but isn’t everyone in the industry as digital gains importance? Perhaps now is the time for you to look for new opportunities … but I don’t think another employer will be buying your lunch!
Report this comment
Craig – I agree with you totally re: the ‘declined to comment’.
Report this comment
Talking of saving cash heard about the newspaper office that doesn’t have a pool car and is banned from claiming private mileage?
True. So much for mobile hacks!
Report this comment
Anyone who thinks MNA staff have been “spoiled” has clearly never worked there. Never mind 12-hour shifts – 15 and 16 hour shifts are the norm, with one journalist staffing an entire edition often the norm – and having to provide a full schedule for the next day as well as fill the centres pages. Remember, too, how many stories the Star has per page. The meal allowance was a small comfort at the end of the month – instead, it seems management are happy to treat us with utter contempt.
Report this comment