Nearly 30 jobs are at risk at Newsquest titles in the North West in a plan to move production of more newspapers to South Wales.
The company’s production hub in Newport has already been given responsibility for producing titles from its West Midlands and North-East divisions despite bitter union opposition.
Now the publisher wants to transfer production of the Bolton News, Lancashire Telegraph and other North West titles with around 29 jobs said to be under threat.
The National Union of Journalists says 17 subbing roles and six page planning roles would be going at the existing production hub in Blackburn and a further six subbing posts at Warrington, Cheshire.
Staff at affected newspapers were summoned to a meeting yesterday afternoon to be told the news.
No-one from Newsquest North West has yet responded to requests for a comment on the plans.
The current Blackburn hub is responsible for production of the Lancashire Telegraph, Bolton News, Westmorland Gazette and a number of other Newsquest titles in Lancashire.
Those titles will now be subbed 220 miles away with the NUJ claiming the “crucial link” with their local communities will be severed.
Blackburn father-of-chapel Chris Gee said: “It is our belief that the strength of a local press is founded on its connection to the communities it serves. Critical in this relationship is a clear understanding of the locality.
“Our papers should be produced in the heart of the communities they serve, not hundreds of miles away.
“Here in Blackburn, we have a dedicated and hardworking subbing team whose professionalism in producing the Lancashire Telegraph, Bolton News, Westmorland Gazette and associated titles, has never been called into question.
“What is the sense of dismissing this skills base, some of whom have decades of newspaper experience? This decision will cause hardship and unemployment for many sub editors because of a decision that is wholly unnecessary.
“The chapel believes moving these posts so far away will undoubtedly diminish the quality of the products we produce, and for what? The pursuit of short term, transient profits for Newsquest at the expense of the careers and livelihoods of hardworking, loyal staff.
“It is impossible for Newsquest management to underestimate how strongly our members feel and the action we are prepared to take to challenge the nonsensical path the company has chosen.”
Tony Howard and Vicki Stockman, joint father and mother of chapel of the group’s Cheshire/Merseyside titles, said: “Even though we have been expecting this news for some time, nothing prepares people for the announcement that their careers could be finished in order to save a highly profitable company even more money.
“We will do our utmost to preserve as many of the six jobs going as possible and will fight for the best possible redundancy terms for those forced to leave. We will also seek to ensure remaining staff, who will be greatly affected by these changes, are protected.
“A great many issues remain unresolved and we will attempt to address those through consultation. All those affected within our chapel are union members, which gives us great unity and strength.
“The fact the announcement was made on International Workers’ Day and the date for implementation falls on the anniversary of D-Day are ironies not lost on our hardworking, long serving, loyal staff.”
Earlier this year Newsquest’s decision to move production of North East titles to the Welsh subbing-hub with the loss of up to 25 jobs led to a 24-hour strike by journalists in York, Darlington and Bradford.
The papers affected, which include the Northern Echo and Bradford Telegraph and Argus, are still in the process of transferring to the hub.
NUJ Northern and Midlands organiser Chris Morley said: “The move to destroy local subbing by Newsquest in the North West, before even the full damage at sister operations in York, Darlington and Bradford has been completed, shows sheer desperation by the company to continue swinging the cost-cutting axe while rivals start to invest in editorial.
“I’m sure the workers at the Newport hub are doing their absolute level professional best to keep up quality but with the vast array of titles flying their way for subbing, it is clearly an impossible task. Our members at Blackburn and Warrington are angry now and we will do all we can to support them at this critical time.”
At the NUJ’s Delegate meeting last month in Eastbourne, Bob Smith, FoC of the Newsquest group chapel, said the hubs were becoming the equivalent of sweatshop call centres.
He said: “Staff are working shifts of 12 to 14 hours on a poorly-designed system and it’s all they can do just to get the stuff out. It is yet another nail in the coffin of local journalism.”
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“a poorly-designed system” – that’s a very polite way of describing Knowledge!
Absolutely ******* **** would be more accurate.
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So Newsquest is essentially closing one subbing hub to move production to another subbing hub? This seems ridiculous. Even if you put to one side the arguments about local knowledge (very valid argument by the way) and instead think about logistics, it doesn’t stack up. Producing the bulk of your papers in one centre leaves Newsquest with a huge disaster risk – what if power fails in Newport and back up generators don’t kick in? This is a risky project which puts daily output of newspapers at risk.
And are there really any savings to be had in this? It’s hardly a huge subbing pool in the north west, and daily newspapers all tend to go to bed around the same time, so surely this is little more than one out (in the north west) one in in South Wales?
I’ve always thought the Blackburn and Bolton papers were well designed, busy papers. From what I’ve seen of the South Wales Argus on here, that doesn’t seem to be the case there.
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Any criticism of Knolwedge and it’s failings fall on deaf ears I am afraid. Any ‘editor’ who wants to keep their job will ignore the many and varied problems and continue beating the drum for efficiency savings.
Unfortunately Knowledge offers little in the way of efficiency savings as the entire workload of designers and layout subs is now in the hands of over-worked newsdesks.
Mention the increased work to your boss and see what he said. Mine shrugged his shoulders and said ‘get on with it’.
Anyone who uses this system on a daily basis knows it is the emperors new clothes.
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Anyone who uses Knowledge on a daily basis knows its many failings. It’s neither time saving nor better than the previous way of doing things. It just transfers the workload away from one group of people so they can be removed and on to another (already overworked) group.
All hail Newsquest. How to destroy once great newspapers in one fell swoop.
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“Staff are working shifts of 12 to 14 hours.”
Where did Bob Smith, FoC of the Newsquest group chapel, get this information from? Certainly not a reliable source. I believe it may have been pulled from his own person, from an area usually reserved for more productive and useful purposes.
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Anyone know if it’s correct, what I’ve heard, that six months after losing subbing to Newport, the daily Worcester News has had to re-employ a part-time sub several days a week to complete pages or short-cut parts of the production process because Newport simply isn’t coping or delivering on time?
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Re that last comment: dunno how true it is, but as a local reader I know the quality of subbing has gone down the tubes
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Moreover, this is getting too big now. It is, as the man said, getting like a call centre. It is a recipe for disaster; the bigger the operation, the less control over the details, and in newspapers it’s details which matter
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To Newsquest, there is no difference between a call centre tele-ad rep and a sub-editor.
You’re just a cog in a corporate machine designed purely to make money at the lowest possible cost.
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“Staff at affected newspapers were summoned to a meeting yesterday afternoon to be told the news.”
My heart still sinks every time I read those words since leaving Newsquest. And I seem to have read them a lot.
This is clearly not a solution. This is rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. Slashing the headcount, and thus the wage bill, is a short-term measure that just puts off the inevitable.
No one wants my former colleagues to keep their jobs more than I do. And I know the hard copy sales figures are never going to be reversed. But if digital revenue really is filling the gap caused by plummeting circulation of physical copies (as I’m sure Newsquest would have us believe) this either wouldn’t be happening, or would be happening on a much smaller scale.
The truth is, the old regional and local newspaper business model is broken and there is little evidence of quality original thought, coming from this or any other ailing local newspaper group, which will secure the future. If there is, I’d love to hear it.
And even IF there is, it doesn’t change the fact that the products are getting poorer in terms of news quality: user-generated words and pictures, subbing pools instead of well written and interesting articles and mistakes aplenty. My former paper is smaller and more expensive than ever. What other industry would expect to provide less for its customers yet charge more? I don’t even use the website, despite the news being free.
I loved my time in the local press but when I saw the writing on the wall, even though I could have stayed, I knew it was time to go and I see nothing now that makes me think that was a bad decision. There was no point in designing pages fewer and fewer people were going to read. The stress of the job was bad enough at the best of times but the constant worry year in, year out, about job security was too much in the end. You might say I’m a dinosaur and a luddite. But I would have happily learned new skills (and I have: see below). But not miles away and for (far) less money.
So I walked away from Newsquest. It was best for both of us.
Thanks for the cheque, though: I spent it wisely on clearing my mortgage and learning new skills for a new career, which is now going very well thanks.
I wish everyone the very best of luck, I genuinely do.
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This appears once again to be a lack of overall vision by the company. How on earth can the closure of sub-editing hubs and moving them to Newport benefit anyone, except the company who put maximising profits first. Local knowledge in the area is and should be at the heart of Journalism. Maybe cancelling papers will wake them up !
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The writing’s been on the wall for subs for years because of new production methods and online publishing, I don’t envy the position they’re in. Newport will have its hands full though, the subs at Blackburn worked flat out subbing so many newspapers. The added sadness about subs being laid off is the loss of experience, they tend to be people who’ve been in the industry for a long time and have built up irreplaceable knowledge. Tragic to see the loss of talent. But that’s corporate newspaper companies these days I’m afraid, it only knows one way to make money – costs up, expenses down, hope people keep buying your product out of sheer loyalty until they stop – but by then you’ll be somewhere else so won’t care.
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It is the loss of experience that hurts. The Newport hub is full of copy editors who have little – if any – journalism background and no interest in or knowledge of your local patch.As for the templates – dull, dull, dull. The paper has lost its mojo.
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And now they’ve advertising for trainees! We know what that means…
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Trainees! We do indeed know what that means don’t we.
How dare the company offer work to recent graduates. It is appalling that in this day and age a person can walk out of university into a job. What happened to the good-old-fashioned months of having to sign on at the dole office?
Yet another national institution has gone the way of overt racism and corporal punishment. This country is going to the dogs!
Where is Steve Dyson when you need him?
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GladImOutOfIt
May 2, 2014 at 2:13 pm
And now they’ve advertising for trainees! We know what that means…
No, perhaps you’d like to enlighten us? (Brilliant sub editing/proofing by the way …)
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You would have thought they would ensure the new system could do the job more easily and efficiently…but no. I doubt anyone with sharp end experience was consulted about it. Newsquest seems obsessed with a one size fits all approach dictated from the top. It has become a lumbering corporate dinosaur.
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First, every sympathy to those affected in the North West.
>It is the loss of experience that hurts. The Newport hub is full of copy editors who have little – if any – journalism background and no interest in or knowledge of your local patch
It was pretty much 5-4-3-2-1 before the ‘let’s bash the Newport subs as incompetent and uncaring’ brigade began to wade in with half-ideas presented as fact.
‘Full of’ = 12 graduate trainees (receiving ongoing training/supervision) to 22 senior subs, with many decades in journalism between them. Not all of it ‘in another country’. And already getting to know lots about Lendal Bridge. And asparagus. Because, believe it or not, some people do take pride and interest in their work. Whether it’s a story from Cadoxton or Consett.
Chris Morley’s quote in the story is worth reprising: “I’m sure the workers at the Newport hub are doing their absolute level professional best to keep up quality.”
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The news was given to the soon-to-be departing subs by editor Kevin Young with the words ‘this won’t take long’. Nice.
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What I find quite disturbing about all this, is that the North East papers’ “transfer” to Newport is not yet complete.
The new hub, which I’m sure is trying, is yet to produce a daily paper, and management are now pushing ahead with the North West move… Baffling.
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What an absolute tragedy about Blackburn subbing hub. Having worked both at Blackburn and Bolton, I know the job could be lousy and stressful, but the people I worked with were first-rate operators, highly skilled, with decades of experience. Newsquest are flushing all this down the pan because they don’t care about quality. They never did.
I’m so glad I baled out when I did, but I’m still a LET/BEN person at heart. Best of luck, everyone. You deserve better.
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Never let the facts get in the way of a good story, eh ‘Also Inside’?
The hub already produces three daily newspapers – the South Wales Argus, the Worcester News and the York Press.
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OK, I stand corrected, was led to believe first daily was happening this week. Apologies.
But the fact does remain that the NE transfer is not complete, as NQ HQ presses on with another region – forcing hundreds of years of skills, experience and knowledge out of the door.
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Could Hub sub give those of us considering a move to Newport some idea of the working practices and hours etc. Do the subs work on complete pages or are they subbing a story in isolation – just filling boxes for text and headline etc?
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Hours are on a rota basis. And sort of negotiable. Most work 7.5 hour shifts, five days a week (no one works Saturdays). Some do longer shifts but only three days.
Most do a mix of start times (8am some days, 1pm others). But others choose to do all lates.
And no, not complete pages. Though you can choose to pick up related stories. Otherwise, one big subbing queue of individual stories, done on the basis of which title’s deadline is closest. Sport as well as news.
And a nice bunch of friendly people, despite what some commenters on here seem to imagine!
Newport’s, er, a functional sort of place. But nearby, there’s Cardiff for shops, the Beacons, the Wye Valley etc for scenery. House prices are ok. And you can be in London by train inside two hours.
If any of that helps.
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