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Jobs at risk as publisher unveils production hub plan

Ten new jobs are set to be created with 24 placed at risk of redundancy as a result of a new production hub plan involving a group of regional titles.

Regional publisher Archant wants to centralise production of all its weekly newspaper titles in London, Kent, Hertfordshire and Cambridgeshire at a single unit based in Norwich.

The company’s Norfolk and Suffolk titles, which include the Eastern Daily Press and East Anglian Daily Times, are already produced at the Norwich unit.

Now the plan is to extend the unit by creating an additional ten roles in Norwich and one in London, while placing 24 editorial production staff across the existing South East centres at risk of redundancy.

Editorial page production for London, Kent and Herts & Cambs publications is currently carried out in Ilford, Ashford, Stevenage, St Albans, Welwyn and Huntingdon.

A consultation will begin shortly with affacted staff.

Miller Hogg, managing director of Archant East, said the proposed move to Norwich was designed to improve efficiency and reduce production costs.

However he added:  “Responsibility for all aspects of the content of the titles remains with newspaper editors and their news reporting teams who will continue to be locally based in existing offices.

“Sports reporting and production staff will also remain locally and are not affected by this proposal.”

The proposals, announced to staff at 11am yesterday before being made public at 5.45pm, follow a review of editorial production processes across Archant East’s weekly newspaper operations.

Laura Davison, NUJ national organiser, said: “The low-paid journalists at Archant, who have already borne pay cuts and pay freezes, now face losing their jobs in the name of efficiency.

“Uprooting more than 100 miles to work in Norwich is simply not realistic for those affected. Archant should engage in a genuine consultation on alternatives to these proposals and demonstrate they properly value quality local journalism and value their staff.

“Readers of Archant papers who support the campaign should contact the NUJ for more information.”

23 comments

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  • July 15, 2014 at 7:44 pm
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    Brilliant of Archant to announce this news at 17.45, when many local hacks have packed up on a Monday. It must have been months in the planning, so why not 9.45 to allow HTFP commentators to start blasting with typical brio? Well, we know the answer to that really. As for moving production of its London papers to Norfolk – what superb vision, what synergies! ‘Mangelwurzel shortage rocks City traders.’ Or ‘Metropolitan sophisticates hail line-dancing festival’. We’re doomed, we’re all doomed.

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  • July 16, 2014 at 9:31 am
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    I particularly love the comment: “… news reporting teams who will continue to be locally based in existing offices.”

    The Kent newspaper reporters are currently based around 40 miles off patch in Essex!

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  • July 16, 2014 at 9:33 am
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    I suppose merging all page layout and sub-editing into a sort of giant battery hen shed-style operation in Norwich makes sense if you’re just crunching numbers – and if the content is still being gathered locally.
    However, it’s a sad day for former colleagues who look set for the chop…

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  • July 16, 2014 at 10:49 am
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    Something we fought for years and managed to convince those who should have known better to resist. So now we will have templated pages and reporters writing their own headlines. All local knowledge out of the window. Sad day for journalism. 15 people turned up for work yesterday to be told they are on the scrap heap. And no, they don’t want to work in Norwich!

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  • July 16, 2014 at 11:45 am
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    So my loyal, extremely knowledgeable ex colleagues are going through “consultation” for the 4th time!!!! Archant what are you doing again!! no wonder local new’s is slowly and sadly dying off the way they treat their staff, use to be such an amazing company to work for years ago. Was the best job I ever had in the earlier days :-(

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  • July 16, 2014 at 1:06 pm
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    Well it clearly works: look at JP!!!!

    A friend of mine has just received a call from ‘Kevin’ (no surname: not professional) asking his thoughts on the Yorkshire Evening Post and if he’d take a trial subscription for a week. The comment was that JP were trying the “old format”. He didn’t elaborate, unfortunately, but did admit that he been met with much negative feedback. Having been told that it would then be up to my friend to cancel that subscription, he wisely refused.

    Sympathies to those at Archant going through consultation: it’s a rotten time, especially for staff of long service and loyalty.

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  • July 16, 2014 at 1:15 pm
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    As JPCCV says above, it’s a rotten time, especially with a family. But I can’t stress this enough, the world outside newspapers is really not that frightening and in the long term I wager any modern sub will feel better and be in better mental health when they are finally out of this unrecognisable business.

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  • July 16, 2014 at 1:40 pm
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    yet another sign of the sad and rapid decline of this one respected regional news group reeling from one disaster to another, this time job cuts under the guise of “improving efficiency and reducing costs”
    more like the result of their poor management and overall dumbing down as highlighted by their god awful copy sales and commercial performances not to mention throwing money at the cringeworthy Mustard tv vanity project
    Whilst wishing good luck to those soon to be shown the door i somehow think the sympathies should go to those who remain

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  • July 16, 2014 at 1:58 pm
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    They did something similar to the production department 3 years ago. All I can say is there is life after Archant. Good luck to those that lose their jobs.

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  • July 16, 2014 at 2:46 pm
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    As one of those subs involved, I can only echo the thoughts above.

    We hoped Archant was better than the rest and saw the benefits of having knowledgeable and talented local subs. How wrong we were. A sad day for local journalism and for Archant’s newspapers which will, without a doubt, suffer as a result. They will become like the ‘sub-less’ rival titles – dull, completely templated and error-strewn.

    Archant is losing loyal, dedicated professionals who have been put through the mire over the past few years, having had to interview for their own jobs following a previous ‘consultation’ and restructure.

    RIP Archant. RIP local journalism.

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  • July 16, 2014 at 4:48 pm
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    Yesterday I picked up one of the many copies of the Bromley Times that had been sitting untouched outside Sainsburys for nearly a week.

    I really don’t understand what all the fuss is about as there is only about four pages of news that is obviously just re-hashed press releases…….it could have been subbed in Peru.

    Cheap ad next to another cheap badly designed ad……not one national ad either which goes to show how the “newspaper” is thought of by media agencies and national clients.

    Pointless bit of old tat that I wouldn’t even line my budgie’s cage with.

    Much love

    G

    x

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  • July 16, 2014 at 6:23 pm
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    I survived. Just. Now I need a sub at the YA in Basildon and in Enfield so contact me and you could pocket your payoff and walk straight into another job with another Archant old boy.

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  • July 16, 2014 at 6:39 pm
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    So Boss Hogg is wheeled out to present yet another Archant-inspired Dukes of Hazzard-style car crash in slow motion as the senior directors feather their own nests by sacrificing yet more loyal, talented and devoted staff. So utterly predictable and boring.
    What happened to the original forward thinking that established Eastern Counties Newspapers as a Colossus of the industry. Jeremiah Colman must be turning in his grave.
    Give it 10 years and this lot will bring the whole stack down. Clueless, headless chickens.

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  • July 17, 2014 at 8:01 am
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    Look what hubs Atex etc did for JP papers and Turn Back!

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  • July 17, 2014 at 10:24 am
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    You just have to get through the shambles that is an Archant redundancy process, I dearly hope it has improved since I went through it…the night before we were told our managing director was telling our team about when he was poor he’d taken advantage of all the McDonalds 241 offers…so he knew what was going to happen the next day and he thought he’d give us a bit of advice hey! There certainly is life after Archant, good luck to everybody!

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  • July 17, 2014 at 11:00 am
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    Take the money and run, life after Archant is far better.

    The board have shown over the last ten years that news and readers are not at the centre of their decisions.

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  • July 17, 2014 at 12:01 pm
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    RIP a once credible publisher,a rudderless ship crashing from one disaster to the next.
    my sympathies are with those poor souls that are left working there,not the ones who will soon be shown Archants famous revolving staff door.

    With the good staff now long gone and thriving elsewhere its no wonder majority of those still hanging on to the wreckage across all departments are applying for jobs to get out

    oh,and I love Archant lifers “Boss Hogg” nice one!

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  • July 17, 2014 at 2:40 pm
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    Most Archant weekly papers not look complete abortions, thrown together with no thought and certainly no pride. Standards of their once flagship dailies are also dropping like a stone. However, I’m sure the bean counters and shareholders are rubbing their greasy palms with glee at the prospect of making a few more grubby quid.

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  • July 17, 2014 at 7:04 pm
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    Usual drivel: like the fuzz in my old patch claiming they could ‘more efficiently’ police a town with a fair level of drugs/ drink + violence / general antisocial / car and burglary crime from a station around 15 miles away when they shut the local nick just after a major drugs bust, followed closely by the ambulance ‘service’ claiming it was better to shut their local station and send van replacing van shift and shift about from around 30 miles off.

    If we’re too skint to do anything properly, we’d have more time for these suits if they’d simply admit it and state the case for making the best of it.

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  • July 18, 2014 at 10:33 am
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    That’s the point though isn’t it? It’s never the ‘suits’ who have to cut their cloth.

    Desperate to maintain their own standard of living they sacrifice the workers lower down the chain who are responsible for the exalted and probably undeserved high living standards of the ‘suits’ in the first place.

    The product then suffers and ultimately the living standards of the ‘suits’ will drop. It’s madness.

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  • July 24, 2014 at 8:17 pm
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    Someone should sack the London editors, they couldn’t care less about anyone else in the company. They’re absolutely useless, that’s why they’re losing so many sales, people don’t want to read their drivel. Head in the sand syndrome ….

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  • July 28, 2014 at 4:23 pm
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