More than 20 journalists’ jobs are set to go at three Newsquest centres in Yorkshire and the North-East in a new subbing hub move, according to union claims.
The National Union of Journalists says sub-editing roles at York, Bradford and Darlington are at risk over plans to switch production to the group’s subbing hub in Newport, South Wales.
If the plan goes ahead, it could see the Darlington-based Northern Echo subbed in Newport, 270 miles away.
The union says 23 jobs are set to be lost in all, with five at risk in York, 11 at Bradford and seven in Darlington.
Other papers affected by the plan include The Press, York and the Bradford Telegraph and Argus along with sister weeklies such as the Craven Herald, Ilkley Gazette and Wharefdale Observer, Keighley News, Durham Times and Darlington and Stockton Times.
The move comes two months after Newsquest axed its production hub in Worcester with the loss of 15 jobs, with some of the work transferred to the Newport hub.
Chris Morley, the NUJ’s Northern & Midlands organiser, said: “Even by Newsquest standards, it is breath-taking if management think no consequences will flow from sending local news around 270 miles from the far north of England to the southern fringe of Wales.”
It is understood that staff were told of the latest plans at a 4pm meeting yesterday afternoon.
One staffer who do not wish to be named described the news as a “hammer blow.”
He told HTFP: It comes as a hammer-blow to be told, after a couple of years of working long days and going that extra yard for the company, without a pay rise for five years, that you can either decamp to Wales or face being made redundant.
“It is typical of the way Newsquest and other large newspaper groups push people around and crunch numbers to satisfy shareholders, without taking a longer view about the state of the industry and the newspapers they produce.”
Mark Stead and Tony Kelly, York’s NUJ joint Fathers of the Chapel, said: “We are totally outraged at this development and opposed to any more redundancies.
“For the past six years our members have borne the brunt of a hack and slash policy of sackings, frequent bouts of non-replacement of staff, and crippling pay freezes, which, combined with the high rise in the cost of living, effectively means almost annual pay cuts.
“Management say the new system will improve editorial operation within the entire Newsquest business. How can this be when local newspapers, whose daily existence and lifeblood hinges on the closest of links with their respective communities, are to be produced hundreds of miles away, indeed in another country?
“It seems ridiculous that three local newspapers in York, Bradford and Darlington are again being systematically dismantled, downgraded and ultimately destroyed to make yet more profit for a parent company, which has shown little regard for, or faith in, hundreds of hard-working and ever more flexible staff.”
No-one from Newsquest has so far responded to requests for a comment.
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The papers will not be ‘subbed’ in Newport, in any meaningful sense of the word, if the titles already produced there are anything to go by.
Copy is placed in ill-fitting templates and given a quick spell-check by the ‘trainee copy editors’ whose jobs were advertised here on HTFP a few weeks ago and who don’t necessarily have any journalistic background or training and certainly wouldn’t have local knowledge about places hundreds of miles away.
Judging by the Ludlow Advertiser’s first week out of Newport, if copy or bylines or pictures don’t fit for any reason, then it’s just left misaligned with gaps and white space or else random chunks are excised. There’s no consistency of style with page headings and, classiest of all, it appears that if a picture caption is too long, it’s not edited, but merely shrunk to a smaller point size, giving an interesting mixture of sizes on the same page.
If the ex-Worcester papers have dramatically improved since that week, that would be good, but somehow I doubt it.
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Perhaps Peter Barron should be voicing off about this outrage rather than silly, meaningless digs at the BBC.
The Northern Echo used to be the paper everyone in the North East looked up to. Now, it’s been steadlily stripped away and denuded. Damn shame!
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Good old Newsquest. Just before Christmas as well. Great timing.
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‘Hub’. The word that must fill newspaper staff with dread these days. Why would readers continue to buy a local paper that really isn’t?
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Full marks for printing this letter (link below) but it sums up the problems with sub editors without local knowledge and without time:
http://www.cravenherald.co.uk/opinion/opinion_letters/10825895.The_wrong_picture/
It’s going to get far worse when subs in another country get to grips with Yorkshire/Durham.
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Knew after reading the headline and before reading the story it was a Newsquest move. It’s what they have been doing for years and they clearly do not care a fig for the diminishing quality of the papers that result from this folly. I have every sympathy for the subs who will lose their jobs, and for the readers of the papers which will no longer serve their communties as they have in the past.
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Yes, we live in a different world (one where the pace of economic change is not just unsettling to a lot of hacks of a certain age but now pervades every aspect of everyone’s lives) but even, say five years ago, these things would have sparked stories within the papers listed here and any other decent publication.
How often would we run stories about a local authority using a supplier outside its borough, jobs exported to India, the absentee councillor living miles away from his patch and cut and run employers?
But now this kind of behaviour appears almost daily on this website (yet sadly goes unreported within the rest of the media) and it is being displayed by the owners of the majority of the UK’s ‘local’ newspapers.
There is a, dare I say it, psychosis of inhumane greed and selfishness abroad in much of our business community that makes me think of the collective madness that has preceded some of the last hundred years’ most terrible events.
Or should I go and lie down?
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All Subbed Out hits the nail squarely on the head.
Newport’s ‘Centre of Excellence’ subbing hub is a farce.
Shoddy templates with no resemblance whatsoever to the previous ‘look’ of individual papers cobbled together and thrown onto pages as early as possible to improve ‘page flow’.
Stories cut mid-sentence when they over-run template space or left with an inch or two of white space when they fall short.
Broken headlines, three and four-deck headlines for nibs, three-word headlines for page-leads. Classics such as ‘Team wins match’ and ‘Player scores good goal’ in the sports section.
As for the actual subbing of copy, prepare to be very, very disappointed. Spelling errors, awful cuts, changes that make no sense whatsoever – we recently saw the name of our paper in an ‘XX can exclusively reveal’ changed to that of another paper in the group.
And if you think all that might lower morale, wait until senior staff at Newport’s hub tell you: ‘”I/We do not care about you paper.”
If All Subbed Out thinks he/she is just witnessing early teething problems that will all be ironed out in time, I am sorry to disappoint. We’ve been using the system since the summer – one of the first few in the roll-out – and things have not improved one single iota.
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Not sure that’s a great example Bantams.
Doesn’t matter how many local staff you have, you’re not going to know the names/faces of every reserve team player at every club in your local league.
It’s the big stuff you need to worry about – like calling the Brighton Argus “Argos”.
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Another nail in the coffin of the once-great traditions of regional and local journalism. My sympathy goes to anyone who loses his or her job, but also to those that are left and see their copy being butchered by subs hundreds of miles away, with no knowledge of the region/locality in question.
Good luck and solidarity with any action you choose to take to defend your jobs and our newspapers!
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Correct me if I’m wrong, but that means that the D&S Times, a once fine paper of record covering North Yorkshire, Cleveland and County Durham, is now printed in Glasgow and will be subbed in Gwent. So much for ‘local.’
The decline of the the local newspaper industry is a self-fulfilling prophecy; the way Newsquest and co operate means they are engineering their own demise. Words, which were once my business, fail me.
My heart goes out to the staff involved.
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“For the past six years our members have borne the brunt of a hack and slash policy of sackings, frequent bouts of non-replacement of staff, and crippling pay freezes, which, combined with the high rise in the cost of living, effectively means almost annual pay cuts” are you sure Mark, because as an ex employee, I think you’ll find editorial have been relatively spared the hacks and slash, that other department have had.
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Confused – I agree with you. Other than on this site, I don’t recall any coverage on local media of the outsourcing to India of the 70-ish local pre press/design jobs. Local TV did cover the NUJ strike a few years ago though, maybe because the newsreaders were in the NUJ? Best wishes to those affected. There are too many of us that know how you are feeling now, but worse still at this time of year.
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I don’t suppose anyone has taken the time to sit and think that none the big four newspaper group would be taking these steps if circulations and advertisement revenue had continue. It’s time for a reality check ladies and gents, you’ve got about three years left. NO ONE WANTS TO BUY NEWSPAPERS so it really doesn’t matter if you have the best designed product on the market!
I have sat and read all of the woe is me comments over the past few years and didn’t see any sympathy for pre press, press room staff losing their jobs from all of these editorial staff on here. Also from my experience having witnessed it at first hand – I have never seen a sub use a computer properly since they were introduced back in the day!
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Why isn’t the NUJ calling for a national Newsquest strike. We all know that Newsquest will send all it’s titles to Newport eventually but we are all putting our heads in the sand and wait for the inevitable to happen. We should stand up for our local community newspapers and against the share holders that want to squeeze every last drop of profit from the organisation.
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I feel desperately sorry for the excellent workers at these centres – there are incredibly devoted staff who really have put in huge amounts of extra effort over the years. It’s almost impossible to keep trying to improve your newspapers when you’re fully expecting that as soon as you put the effort in, management will kick away another level of support, another set of workers with expertise. Papers such as the D&S will suffer most from this, with its exceptional local knowledge and reach. Not sure how the subbing hub will react to all the local parish council reports divided by area or what it’ll do with show results come the summer!
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Also, I notice that Peter Barron is tweeting out a story about outrage over jobs being outsourced to India. I hope the outsourcing of jobs to Wales receives similar coverage.
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The quality of the subbing won’t suffer – I’ve been assured by a straight-from university wannabe who starts her new £15k subbing job in Newport with a full 5 days training in the new year.
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…but it ought to be said that subbing howlers caused by a lack of local knowledge are not down to the individual subs but to the system which placed them hundreds of miles from their titles.
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Imagine the following is a Newport template navvy’s headline on a local correspondent’s story in the D & S Times:
Councils to investigate Scargill booze links with mining.
Dear old Arthur’s lawyers would not be amused.
Thankfully, the copy clearly states the subject is 19th century mining
near Scargill and Booze, two hamlets straddling the Pennines on the Durham-North Yorkshire border.
So Arthur would no doubt see the funny side and perhaps even request a framed copy of the story.
But this hypothetical literal cock-up highlights the inherent dangers of hiring cheap, untrained template navies.
In the shrinking world of real journalism, Newsquest’s Newport gulag is an affront to the intelligence of readers, a brutal assault on decent subs and a two-fingered salute to more than a century of trusted accuracy and credibility in weekly and daily provincial newspapers.
BBC local coverage blighting local papers?
Don’t make me laugh!
Lemmings have only themselves to blame when they jump off cliffs.
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Following up All Subbed Out’s comment, last week’s Ludlow Advertiser carried a front page apology – see http://www.ludlowadvertiser.co.uk/news/10812847.An_apology_to_Mrs_Pat_Hansen/
This apology explained that the previous week’s front page article was not written by Mark Bowen or any other Ludlow Advertiser reporter.
But as far as I recall, the previous week’s front page article actually carried the byline “Mark Bowen”.
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Just another story to file under “the local newspaper industry is on its last legs” I’m afraid.
And the NUJ is toothless these days too, sadly.
Turn the lights out, I’ll be leaving before you.
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Content being subbed in different countries is nothing new.
Fairfax in Australia subs some of its Australian titles in New Zealand.
http://www.couriermail.com.au/business/pagemasters-jobs-to-go-as-more-fairfax-media-subediting-goes-offshore/story-fnihsps3-1226693046603
It’s a relief Kiwis speak better English that Indians but the issue of local knowledge remains.
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Casper – While wishing your graduate friend good luck in her chosen career and admiring her enthusiasm to get any job in the business I cannot help but worry about her long term future (scratch that I just mean future!).
Almost five years ago I attended a meeting of senior journalists and the local MD (No Longer With Company) where a time-served editor (also NLWC) asked the regional MD (also NLWC) how the about-to-be-introduced direct loading of pages by reporters would affect career progression.
After all becoming a sub was the usual next step up.
“I don’t think you really need bother about that” was the reply.
The worrying thing was that the company’s most senior editorial figure in attendance to, I thought to bat for journalism and someone who I had held a high regard for, with ink in their veins,permanently rolled sleeves and tie undone, just mouthed platitudes along company lines and said he would speak to the editor afterwards.
That was when I decided to throw in the towel after more than 20 years with that company.
Becoming a sub-editor is a brave first move, has your friend thought of becoming a data journalist instead? I have absolutely no idea what that is but it sounds like something the good folk of Oxdown have been crying out for.
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>Copy is placed in ill-fitting templates
Both are chosen by the editors/news editors.
>if copy or bylines or pictures don’t fit for any reason, then it’s just left misaligned
Because subs can’t do anything about it. They can’t modify templates.
>There’s no consistency of style with page headings
Because if it’s not put out in style by the news editor, subs have no way of knowing what it should be. And can only use the style sheets attached to the template
>stories left with an inch or two of white space when they fall short.
Subs can’t make stuff up to fill the holes.
>Imagine the following is a Newport template navvy’s headline on a local correspondent’s story in the D & S Times:
No, that was done at home.
Newport subs doing 12-hour shifts aren’t the cause of your ills.
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Everything West Wales Hack says above is 100% correct.
He/she could also have mentioned that we have now been told to try not to ask for any more templates because we ‘should have enough’.
No, I’m not joking.
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