Journalists whose roles disappeared when the Liverpool Post closed last month are to be redeployed as part of the new seven-day Liverpool Echo.
Publisher Trinity Mirror announced yesterday that it is to move to a seven-day operation in Liverpool with the launch of the Echo’s new Sunday edition from 19 January.
The company has now confirmed to HTFP that none of the journalists previously employed by the Post will be losing their jobs with most redeployed across the new seven-day Echo.
The only exception is the Post’s former editor Mark Thomas, who is taking up the reins at the North Wales Daily Post in succession to Alison Gow who is moving to a digital role.
A Trinity Mirror spokesman told HTFP that while no new jobs would be created as a result of the new launch, none had been lost as a result of the Post closure.
“The additional staff resource from the Post will now be redeployed across the new seven-day Echo,” he said.
Trinity Mirror already has a seven-day presence in Newcastle, with the Sunday Sun, Birmingham, with the Sunday Mercury, and Wales, with Wales on Sunday.
But the launch of a seven-day Echo will make it the only UK regional title to be published throughout the week.
Steve Anderson-Dixon, managing director Trinity Mirror North West and Manchester said: “The Liverpool Echo is a strong and respected brand. It has a connection with its audience that is unparalleled across Merseyside.
“We already have in place brilliant local journalists, an excellent local sales force and a well-established readership which we believe will welcome the Echo seven days a week.
“This is brave, energetic and in my view, brilliant opportunity for the Echo to further extend its publishing footprint and we see this investment as a ringing endorsement of the Echo, the city of Liverpool, and its people.
“It is a wonderful feeling to be launching a print product in the knowledge that doing so will provide more momentum to our websites and our determination to be a world-class digital publisher.”
Echo editor Ali Machray added: “We can’t wait for January 19. The fact that we can do this is testimony to what an amazing city Liverpool is.
“Its news and sports potential are astounding and we’re determined to give its people a Sunday Echo they can savour.”
In an Echo story announcing the Trinity Mirror made clear that the Sunday Echo would be a “seventh day of publication, not an independent product.”
“Like the weekday and Saturday Echo, it will be packed with news and sport and it will fight for its readers and its city in the true tradition of the brand,” it said.
It promised that the edition, which will be priced at 50p, would have a “strong focus on high-quality coverage of Liverpool and Everton football clubs and in meeting the demand for minute-by-minute football information.”
Trinity Mirror chief executive, Simon Fox, said: “This is an exciting opportunity for the group. Strengthening our weekend operation in Liverpool will both help us to enhance our 7 day digital news coverage and bring an innovative new Sunday newspaper to market.”
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Great news – its good to see that some management still have a belief in print – even if perhaps one of the primary motivators is to grow online content and increase audience. Nothing wrong with that either!!
The Echo is a strong newspaper and I know has a huge online audience so I expect this will strengthen their publishing position even more. I hope its a great success – we could do with some good news to start the year.
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Great news! So that means they will be taking on extra skilled journalists to cope with the extra work, then. Only, I missed that bit in the report…
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No “Sub Up North” – it means they are able to retain the highly skilled journalists that would normally have lost their jobs following the closure of the Liverpool Post. Why go out of your way to find something negative to write when something very positive is happening in the print world?
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Well said Spindrifter
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I don’t understand your thinking – Sub Up North. There are no new journalists, but fortunate ones that have thankfully be redeployed to work on a Sunday edition. Doesn’t that equate to “extra skilled journalists to cope with the extra work”?
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Fair play, brave shout from SAD.
I have a strange counter intuitive feeling that it will work.
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Ah well, happy to be proved wrong on this occasion.
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Good luck with this – hope it’s a success. Great to see expansion somewhere in the local media.
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I value all opinions (no right or wrongs necessarily) Sub Up North, it makes for better reading/debate here.
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sub up north obviously did not read the full version of the story before commenting. Most of the highly-skilled journalists fearing the chop will be relieved to be staying, despite the challenges facing them with Sunday publication. The company deserves praise. Ian Manning.
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Blimey.
A UK regional newspaper group actually investing in a new publication?
How very strange.
TM seems to be running against the received wisdom of slash and burn which has brought the industry to the brink of ruin.
And unusually, it shows they have managers with the intellectual capacity to come up with something other than the brain-dead mantra of cut, cut and cut again.
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