A weekly newspaper due to go twice-weekly next year is carrying out a staffing review which may lead to new jobs being created and others being lost.
As first revealed on HoldtheFrontPage, the Exeter Express and Echo is to increase the frequency of publication to twice a week from 16 February, with an extra edition on Monday.
Editor Jon-Paul Hedge has previously confirmed that the paper will be hiring additional staff to help boost the paper’s content operation.
But HTFP also understands that some existing roles may be placed at risk of redundancy.
Publisher Local World said in a statement: “Further to the announcement that the Express & Echo plans to increase its publishing from weekly to twice weekly, a review of the current newsroom structure is underway.”
The company has refused to confirm that any decisions have been made on staffing levels, or that there will be any redundancies.
However one source told HTFP: “A number of staff in Exeter have been informed that their jobs are under threat, as a result of which they are now involved in a formal redundancy consultation.”
The Express & Echo went from daily to weekly in 2011 when it was owned by Northcliffe Media, but interviewed by HTFP earlier this year, Local World chief executive David Montgomery said the move had been too hasty and had left a “gap in people’s lives” in the city.
Plans for the new Monday edition, which will be priced 50p, were confirmed by LW on 5 November.
Jon-Paul said at the time : “It’s an ambitious plan but Exeter is an ambitious city. It has seen tremendous growth over recent years and is leading the way in so many areas.
“We have listened to our readers, who said alongside our digital platform, they want us to publish more. I’m delighted that we’ll be hiring additional staff, to meet this demand with more of the content our readers love.
“With Exeter City and East Devon editions, both Thursday and Monday’s newspapers will reflect the views of residents, that business growth and shared aspirations mean a bright future ahead.”
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Yes, could we have some clarity from Mr Hedge please: what will be the overall increase in journalistic resource planned to cope with this increased workload? I think we all know the answer….
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Do they know it’s Christmas?
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“And finally on this glittering evening, our main announcement. The Express & Echo Award For The Most Disingenuous Statement Surrounding A Newspaper Launch goes to….”
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The local management are too busy with vitally important work to bother with launching this extra edition with the right number of hacks. This vitally important work includes: 1) wedging unwilling staff into company-hired cocktail dresses for duff awards ceremonies; 2) hiring third rate ‘talent’ to perform at said awards; 3) cosying up to council chief execs, estate agents and local solicitors.
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About time that place had a shake up.
More dead wood than the Golden Hinde
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Anyone, like us, a big fan of the UK’s 1967 Eurovision entry?
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Here to help if you need me guys….
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Key danger words “ambitious”, “digital platform”, “shared aspirations” are all spelling doom for some poor saps here. Good luck, fellow journalists.
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I thought JP looked quite good in that cocktail dress!
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Juan is a little unfair. If you can’t persuade people to read the newspaper by any other means, instituting a rollling programme of fortnightly awards ceremonies does at least mean that over time, as their turn for an award comes round, the entire population of the Westcountry is almost guaranteed to buy a paper at least once, if only as a souvenir of the big night, and don’t forget the vital role they play in supporting the region’s struggling dress, suit and glassware hire companies, dry cleaners, florists and the manufacturers of placecards.
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Can anyone buy the software gizmo that teaches editors to spout Suitspeak when announcing bad news?
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Welcome to the Echo office where every whim, experiment and barking idea suggested by HQ 200 miles away is eagerly lapped up and acted upon by our pitiful management. They are too keen to stay in a job and jockey for promotion and preferrment to raise any kind of opposition to the hideous ideas being foisted upon us.
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Lord Rothermere forgive them, for they know not what they do.
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Oh dear.
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The local Soroptomists have organised a boycott of the paper, I gather, in protest at lack of coverage.
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You lot all GET BACK TO WORK, otherwise there will be no leftover sandwiches from management meetings distributed to you all any more.
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Can I be Editor? I know what some big words mean!
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We’ve come to calling JP “Paris”…because he’s twinned with London.
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Hello Plant, good to hear from you.
Are you desperate to follow the wife again?
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With apolz to Sirbobofgeldof
And there won’t be jobs in Exeter this Christmas time…
The greatest gift they’ll get this year is strife…ooooooooooooh
Where no jobs ever grow
And no-one really knows
If they’ll have work at this time next year….
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Be reasonable on the awards folks – SOME people with the right contacts in DC Media management do VERY well out of them….
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Of course, Spade a spade is absolutely right – there is plenty of dead wood at the Echo.
Indeed, I’d go as far as to say there are a number of individuals who absence would hardly be noticed. However, they’re the ones who’ve come up with this half-baked scheme rather than those whose jobs are under threat as a result of it!
Quite apart from anything else, it’s plainly madness – from both an employment law and PR perspective – to initiate a formal redundancy consultation just days after announcing the launch of a second edition and promising it will lead to the ‘hiring [of] additional staff’.
With the launch of this second edition, I’m sure everyone can understand the desire to ‘review the current newsroom structure’ and how this might necessitate a change in the roles of some individuals but it’s hard to comprehend why it would demand a loss of personnel – all the more so when the editor is on the record as saying the title will be taking on more staff.
Notwithstanding that, it’s even harder to fathom why if, as we’re led to believe, the Echo is undertaking a review of its entire news operation there are only four people under threat of redundancy and how the soon-to-be twice-weekly Echo intends to function without any features staff or digital editors!
Of course, I’m sure it’s just a coincidence that three of the four concerned are mothers who work part-time! After all, the Echo’s publisher has already endured the embarrassment of one appearance in front of a judge this year [Newspaper fined £750 for breach of Section 39 order, Hold the Front Page, February 25], so I’m sure she’ll be at pains to avoid another. Or maybe not.
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First they came for the printers, and I did not speak out because I was not a printer.
Then they came for the classified team, and I did not speak out because I was not a classified salesman.
Then they came for the accounts department, and I did not speak out because I was not an accountant.
Then they came for me and there was no one left to speak for me.
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Any chance they will also be ‘reviewing’ our publisher’s role?
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Is this why JP is always away being re-programmed away in London while we gallant band back at base struggle to get the paper out? Nice to be rewarded for our efforts with the brown envelope hokey cokey….
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Those ex-Northcliffe big beasts who took the money and ran and are now operating in other media businesses in and around Exeter must be laughing their designer socks off at all this…
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Isca Intel. My hackette girlfriend down south tells me one JP paper ran its community awards night and copy a full year after appealing for entries?Terrific PR.
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I know of a very good former colleague who was disappointed and amazed in equal measure when they missed out on the Echo editor’s job when it came up last time around. Every fortnight or so now I feel like calling them up and asking “Have you seen the latest on Hold The Front Page?” before we have a right old giggle about bullets and dodging…
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Completely unreasonable to suggest, of course, that the tiers of management in DC Media might be ripe for a trim + a clamping down on entertaining and drinks bills in certain quarters? Yep, thought so.
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Since leaving the LW paper I worked at for many years I’ve had dozens of people every week complain to me about the current standard of the publication I used to work for. Chief among their complaints is how the paper has no-one left working for it with any local knowledge, that they never see a reporter (locked in the office) and that more and more stories are off patch generic rubbish.
The same people keep telling me they’ve given up on buying the paper for these reasons. While still working at the paper I told management this, but was ignored – hence my decision to leave (partly).
The management of the South West LW papers are killing their own publications (or at best accelerating their demise) by blindly doing what the useless “transformation team” tells them to do.
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How times have changed from when the E&E was a serious daily and campaigning paper in the days of Steve Hall, Tim Dixon, Chris Styles, Jerry Charge and Sue Kemp – great people who made a difference, who cared passionately about the title and who recognised the need for the paper to set the agenda and campaign on behalf of its readership.
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This involves nothing more than a talented/experienced team of journalists at the Echo being ripped up by a managerial (advertising) led publisher with no clue of how to run a “news”paper. Another sad day for a once great product.
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Juan Direction – Can’t you comment on anything else apart from the “goings on” in Devon? You’re obsessed! Archive your previous comments.
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As an aside, while ‘a review of the [Echo’s] current newsroom structure is under way’, what of the Western Morning News on Sunday?
It must be quite galling for those whose jobs are now under threat to look across to the other side of the office and see a team almost as big as the Echo’s entire editorial department merrily putting together the WMN on Sunday’s West magazine.
Of course, no-one knows quite how many copies the Sunday title is selling, though I’ve heard it suggested it’s less than 5,000; if that’s the case – and if it isn’t then why doesn’t someone from Local World give us the real figure? – then common sense would dictate the Devon publisher might do better to divert her attentions in that direction.
Unless, that is, the Western Morning News on Sunday is one almighty vanity project which no-one dare admit has been a resounding failure!
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Not obsessed Andy Pandy, but in despair at what’s happening to my cherished local paper; one I know and used to love. Only comment on what you know Sir…that’s my motto. Pity people making decisions on the Echo don’t follow the same advice….
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Juan Direction, which LOCAL cherished newspaper? You comment on any LOCAL newspaper developments in Devon – you’re spending far too much money on the very things you think are crap. You’d be better spending your cash on therapy.
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Understand the Echo’s publisher is sharing her vision with staff as I type – look forward to hearing reports back from the frontline!
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Andy Pandy – reading DC Media’s Devon titles IS my therapy! Makes me glad they forced me out all those yonks ago under ‘Aim Fire’…
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That comment by ‘Hacked off’ almost made me choke! The good ol’ days of a dictatorship, like Hitler in his bunker surrounded by yes men.
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Sad to hear that yet more decent journos are facing the chop. We all know the bottom line is that the few remaining will be expected to ‘go the extra mile’ to make the latest management brainwave work – without any cash incentive, no doubt. After taking the Northcliffe shilling for more years than I care to remember I jumped ship voluntarily at the last great leap forward. Although it’s no consolation to those facing the upset and uncertainty of redundancy just before Christmas, I’m sure there’ll come to see in time that life outside LW and a dysfunctional newspaper industry is far preferable.
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Hacked Off : spot on re: Seve Hall, Suzie Kemp, Tim Dixon et al. Had the privilege of working with them for an all too short period of time. Superb team.
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