Trinity Mirror has announced the closure of seven of its regional print titles, with the expected loss of 50 jobs.
The Reading Post, sister title GetReading and the Wokingham and Bracknell Times are to cease print publication along with the Surrey Herald, Surrey Times, Woking Informer and Harrow Observer.
Instead the company is putting his faith in what it is calling a “bold, digital only approach,” focusing on growing its websites in the region.
It said that 26 jobs would go at its Berkshire titles – although 12 new roles will be created – and 24 roles at its West London and Surrey operations.
The Reading Post was originally launched as an evening title by Thomson Regional Newspapers in the 1960s as part of a series of new daily titles ringing London. It was taken twice-weekly by Trinity Mirror in 2009.
Today’s announcement means it will now be an online-only operation based around the getreading.co.uk website.
Simon Edgley, managing director of the company’s Southern region, said: “This is a bold digital-only publishing transformation that will re-establish us as a growing media business that delivers the best quality journalism to our digital-savvy audience.
“We wholeheartedly believe that the future of our business here in Berkshire is online and this is an important and pioneering step that might, in time, be applicable to other existing markets or indeed new ones.”
The changes in Berkshire will mean the loss of 17 editorial, 17 editorial, three administrative and six commercial roles and the creation of around 10 new digital editorial roles and two digital commercial roles.
The Post is currently without an editor following the departure of Andy Murrill for a new role as group editor of the Newbury Weekly News. His last day in the office was this week.
The other changes announced today will see Trinity Mirror exiting the local newspaper market in Harrow entirely, with the closure of the Harrow Observer.
And alongside the closure of the three Surrey titles, the Surrey Advertiser is to get an extra edition covering the Chertsey and Addlestone areas.
The full text of the company statement published on the Trinity Mirror website at noon today can be read below.
Union reaction to the announcement can be seen here.
Following a detailed review of the Trinity Mirror Southern (TMS) portfolio the company has today unveiled a transformational digital-only publishing plan in Berkshire.
This move will focus entirely on developing and growing the digital business around the getreading.co.uk website, which has achieved unrivalled market leading penetration in the area – in the last year monthly unique users have grown by 68% (Jan-Oct 213 to Jan-Oct 2014) and the site continues to show phenomenal audience growth.
Investment in the digital only operation, which will also include an app, will allow the site to concentrate on the four key areas of content that matter to the Berkshire audience, namely: breaking news, What’s On, Reading Football Club and sport.
Combined with data journalism and community content the site will deliver a groundbreaking package to the local audience.
Simon Edgley, managing director of Trinity Mirror Southern said: “This is a bold digital-only publishing transformation that will re-establish us as a growing media business that delivers the best quality journalism to our digital-savvy audience. We wholeheartedly believe that the future of our business here in Berkshire is online and this is an important and pioneering step that might, in time, be applicable to other existing markets or indeed new ones.”
As a result of this change the operation’s Berkshire print titles, namely Reading Post, getreading and Wokingham & Bracknell Times will close. This will see the reduction of approximately 17 editorial, three administrative and six commercial roles and the creation of around 10 new digital editorial roles and two digital commercial roles.
Further changes across the TMS portfolio are outlined below.
West London
A radical new structure is being implemented across the west London titles in Uxbridge, Ealing and Hounslow that focuses on driving more traffic to the getwestlondon website. The newsrooms are being restructured to support a revised print portfolio while concentrating on accelerated digital growth.
We intend to withdraw from the Harrow market and the Harrow Observer will close.
Surrey
A new edition of the Surrey Advertiser – that covers the additional areas of Chertsey and Addlestone – is launching in mid-December 2014. The new edition will ensure that consumers continue to receive the best possible coverage of local news and sport in the area.
The Surrey Herald, the Surrey Times and the Woking Informer will close.
As a result of these changes in west London and Surrey there will be a reduction of approximately 24 roles across editorial and commercial.
Simon Edgley added: “Decisions that impact our staff are never easy to make but they are absolutely necessary if we are to continue our transformation into a modern multiplatform publishing operation, with the flexibility and agility to invest and grow our news brands.”
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An absolute shower of a company, never known one so badly run, all that’s left are knifemen with all the people of quality made redundant already. Terrible, terrible shame.
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So it begins.
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Good grief.
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“Absolutely necessary?” Absolute bollocks.
Market leading titles that outsell and outcirculate the opposition to close down for the sake of an experiment that will backfire massively?
Cutting already overworked staff levels by more than 50% and expect them to do more of the same?
Massive mistake.
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Happy Christmas.
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How many of us, honestly, go on to a newspaper website and actually look at the adverts? I certainly don’t. If I want to look for products I Google them and go direct to the shops that sell them on line. If I were an advertiser I wouldn’t spend money on other people’s websites.
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If it wasn’t for Reading FC getreading would get no hits at all, that’s the only reason it is keeping the website
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Just the start – the newspapers, which still make the money, have become an afterthought as the ‘digital-savvy’ audience are fed drossy quizzes, listicles, galleries and UGC.
Why they don’t just post pictures of kittens and half-naked models to boost page views is beyond me. That and whiny and unbalanced Guardian-type comment pieces.
Idiots.
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He is spot on – the future is undoubtedly digital. But don’t you need journalists to do it?
Bold move if they had kept the journos – it will be UGC hell!
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Aye, you’re all doomed
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People will always want to pick up a newspaper and have thumb through , not sure digital is for everyone….
Just have to make sure that the titles that are left have something in them to read
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The leadership within TMS borders on non-existent. Reporters are given little to no respect while advertising staff are showered with perks and fun days. If they worked a bit harder, maybe these titles would still be profitable. But of course, why should they? They aren’t the ones whose jobs are continuously on the line.
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Shocking. That’s a lot of journalists out of a job plus support staff.
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“…will allow the site to concentrate on the four key areas of content that matter to the Berkshire audience, namely: breaking news, What’s On, Reading Football Club and sport.”
What is “breaking news” in this context? How is it different to “news”?
Doesn’t this just mean the website will concentrate on news, sport and arts & culture, which is what local newspapers and news websites do anyway?
“Combined with data journalism and community content the site will deliver a groundbreaking package to the local audience.”
TM’s data journalism unit is great but it’s a small group of people in Manchester going through official stats and writing up stories … you still need someone who actually knows a little about the local hospital, not just someone in a different city looking at Dept of Health stats for 100 different hospitals.
Community content, also great in principle but there are so many examples of papers coming a cropper when they use community content without properly checking it.
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Spent some time in Reading when it was a TRN centre. Great shame that a publisher the scale of Trinity can’t find the energy or creativity to maintain the title’s validity but also a shame that a community of that size cannot value or sustain a print medium. No winners here.
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If an entrepreneur applied for a development grant or bank loan using the phrase “We wholeheartedly believe that the future of our business here in Berkshire is online and this is an important and pioneering step that might, in time, be applicable to other existing markets or indeed new ones” then he or she would be told to go away and come back with a business plan built on factual evidence and not speculation.
This one statement typifies the mindset of the people controlling the regional press. Instead of building from the bottom up they are slicing from the top down – and any idiot can do that.
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Note there won’t be any “Community sales reps.”
Or “Community HR mangers.”
Just “Community journalists.”
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As an 18th century Whig gentleman I ask my age-old question once again and want an answer as someone must have one – how does any of this make a brass farthing in profit? TM is a business, so where’s the cash for salaries, premises, training, etc. in what’s proposed here? As a pre-digital quills and parchment man perhaps I’m missing something. Come on, you modernist HTFP regulars, tell me how it works.
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Hobson et al – I think by ‘breaking news’ they mean news that when it happens makes you go from the text alert telling you that the Royals have just signed/dropped someone, to the story on your phone/pad you can read AFTER you have sat through the video ad. Then you put the phone down and continue sleeping/jogging/driving.
I don’t think they mean stories about hospitals, councils, crime (unless it is ‘breaking crime’) or human interest stuff etc.
This is breaking news the ‘digital-savvy’ will be interested in, and I might be sticking my neck out here – they are not interested in any of the above unless it involves kittens and/or celebrities. So if you are not in that group – TM is basically saying ‘s*d off!’
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Dick Minim: newspaper websites depend on their present success simply because their names and profiles are kept in the public domain by the continuation of the newspapers themselves. They are totally dependent on the fact that something solid still operates in the physical world that upholds the name and regional identity of the website it is serving, and keeps that name and identity alive in the minds of readers. Remove the newspaper and the presence in the marketplace falls like a stone because the public perception is of failure and obsolescence. So the answer to your question is that in the long term they don’t make a profit.
The simple test will come in ten years’ time. Where will people go for their news? The website of a paper that died ten years earlier? Yeh, right.
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This group, and others, are likely to make more similar cuts as the provincial press continues to shrivel. All sad to witness…..
Will those towns and districts have any papers covering them after these latest cuts?
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When I worked at TM we had a circulation briefing where they revealed sales in South Wales had gone ‘through the floor’ since they shut local offices and put the prices up.
I asked if the top brass had not considered this might happen, to which I was told ‘between you and me, they don’t care what happens in five years time, they think ‘we’ve got your money now’.
If you went to Alan Sugar with that attitude he wouldn’t just fire you, he’d shoot you into space. The newspaper industry is an example of how not to do capitalism.
Adam Smith has just thrown his paper in the bin because its’ got a UGC picture of the back of someone’s head and he’s decided to become a Communist.
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Turkeys everywhere – Christmas is coming – beware the knife!!
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DickMinim – simple; digital display. Bigger than print, popular among local advertisers, and growing by the day. Observer50 I don’t suppose you go to the TV to look for ads either, but the ads go looking for you.
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Dick Minim. It works because digital requires only a handful of semi trained young and cheap IT savvy non journos to fill the site with cops and council press releases and sent in vanity publishing copy.
As a look at any website, not just TM, will show, good English is not required.
Perversely, I applaud TMs honestly. It is saying “we think newspapers are history”. This year does seem to be the one when the tide has finally turned against talented newspaper hacks. Brush up on digital boys and girls or you will stacking tins..
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Dick Minim – it’s one of the great mysteries.
Every product has the overhead of recharged elements within its cost base – the shared cost of HR, management, accounts etc. I have no idea how a web-only product supports all this, let alone those gathering up the news, vid and photos plus ad reps. How any of the big regional media companies can do it is beyond me. They all seem to have plenty of managers to support while cutting back on their product range and operatives.
Also, as soon as you go web-only you open yourself up to competition from a myriad of potential rivals now they don’t have to go through the hoops of producing a print product to claim equal footing in the marketplace.
And, of course, you hand over an added sales tool to any existing rivals offering both print and web.
I too wait to see how the magic trick works. I fear it’s smoke and mirrors.
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“breaking news, What’s On, Reading Football Club and sport.”
That is, nothing in the news beyond basic headlines – road closures, car crashes, the odd mass shooting. Political shenanigans, planning wrangles, complicated crime, court cases – forget ’em. The crooks, fraudsters, tinpot Hitlers & rumour-mongers will be able to get away with murder.
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More digi-babble. The whole thing will go belly-up because digital revenuesare not there. Short-sighted imbeciles.
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Muckspreader … some poorly-paid journos will be better off stacking tins.And as for newspapers being history wasn’t the same said about vinyl LPs, cinemas?
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Newspapers in the Reading area close, taking us a step further into the New Dark Age. Still, there’s always Facebook, though nobody will attend all those council meetings, health authority meetings, court cases, tribunals, hospital trust meetings, or hold bureaucrats to account. Many of these organisations/quangos/politicians/police already think they are above being accountable to the public even though it’s our money that funds them. They will tell us only what they want us to know because there are very few journalists left to dig into the fine print and expose wrongdoing. And when a person wants to complain to a journo that their mother died needlessly in hospital (Mid Staffs) there will be no reporters to check, and the cover ups will continue – not that people give a stuff, until it’s one of their relatives and they have no recourse!
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LordByronic and muckspreader, many thanks for yr answers. Newspapers indeed as much of the past as my esteemed creator, the estimable journalist and essayist Mr Johnson. Well, they were excellent while they lasted. Farewell, gentlemen, we shall all meet again.
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“This move will focus entirely on developing and growing the digital business around the getreading.co.uk website, which has achieved unrivalled market leading penetration in the area – in the last year monthly unique users have grown by 68% (Jan-Oct 2013 to Jan-Oct 2014) and the site continues to show phenomenal audience growth.”
But the market reach remains low no matter how you dress it up! GetReading.co.uk has 14% weekly reach in the Reading Local Authority area – so 86% of residents don’t engage with it! Source: Jicreg October 2014 applied through Telmar.
With a total monthly audience of 161,000 (comScore Sept 2014) and 64.7% of it’s desktop audience coming from outside of the region how long will this survive! Such a disconnect of the audience with the locality for where it serves! Probably all those London Irish supporters who travel from Sunbury to watch their team play.
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The fools!!!! They are the type of people who plant a Japanese Bonsai tree and think it will grow into a 60 foot oak! IDIOTS!!
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Oh for god’s sake. Anyone would think you were carving these comments on stone tablets.
1. Readers are readers. “Digital-savvy” readers are just readers. Time-poor readers, maybe, who want you to sell them your story in one headline, but what’s wrong with that? If you know your story you should know how to sell it in one line, and if you can’t maybe it’s just not that interesting or important. To say “they” are not interested in “real news” is like saying “young people” only want celeb news. It’s just not true. Don’t insult the ten staff who’ll be working at get reading by suggesting that web journalism has to be bad journalism.
2. How many of you take your local paper every day? How many of your kids, brothers, parents? And how many have and use smartphones? Today’s 25-year-old isn’t going to get to 40 and suddenly start buying local papers. The audience for print is literally dying. We don’t have to like it – and I don’t – but we do have to face the fact that this is going to have to happen to all of us eventually.
Obviously, this is terrible news for all those losing their jobs and all those who love newspapers, not just news. But nostalgia doesn’t change buying habits. People’s lives are different now, and we either adapt to that or there will be no news at all.
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As a former Post employee I send my best wishes to the poor staff getting this news today. Once upon a time the paper supported specialists for the council, the crown court, crime, a “fire belle”, theatre and reporters with district patches. Who will cover local politics, planning etc now? Bloggers? Twitter nerds? Best of luck, Reading
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That’s the subs’ desk decimated in Guildford then. TMS were pretty cut-throat last Christmas axing a number of subs from the London titles. This time it will cut a lot deeper and affect many more families. Sad times indeed.
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Mr T . I write more in sadness than anger. Blinkered board members have written their own newspaper history. Wish it was otherwise.
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Well said, Annoyed.
I only come on this website now to keep up to date with latest developments in the industry and shake my head in disbelief at how many dinosaurs still exist.
There are so many useless people in upper and middle management in newspapers. Sorry, that’s harsh. They’re just from a different era, they were good once maybe but never had the ability to adapt and innovate. The industry is full of people like that. Which is why they bolt on websites and lay them out as boringly as they do their papers and sell ads in box sizes like they do in print.
No fresh ideas.
Digital is undoubtedly the way forward but I don’t believe the people exist at newspapers to carry out the transition, that’s why they are not making any money. Let the journalists stick to good old fashioned journalism and get some creative thinkers in who have some decent ideas of how to rebrand titles to appeal to a younger generation, cos they ain’t going to go to a newspaper title for their info.
This will be a long and painful journey. Good journalists can now reach more people than ever before. It’s just getting paid which might prove difficult.
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lots of factors have helped to speed up the inevitable end of local print.Bean counters cut publicity,sponsorship of local events etc.
You cant expect to print a an evening paper the prev day and still draw people to it.
loss of distribution networks and the work entrusted to the 2 remaining wholesalers who are one size fits all operations with little time/respect for regional or local titles.
No vans,posters or offices disconnects buyers from the product.
None of this would matter if there was a way to make money from digital
platforms……
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A ‘relatively minor’ casualty will be the blind listeners to local Talking Newspapers such as the Harrow one with which I’m a volunteer. A handful of our listeners can manage online material but most can’t and depend on us – as we have depended on Harrow Observer – for all local news and area specific information. Where do they get that now?
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These firms all interact with one another on the mebers only golf course, swapping ideas, so it will not be long before the likes of NQ and JP follow suit.
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People frequently ask me, as a former journalist, whether I want to return to the profession.
To which I usually respond: “I would be lucky to find a full-time, permanent job in regional journalism these days because of the state of the industry.”
This latest news just proves my point….very, very sad for all involved – apart from perhaps the fat cats at the top, who will probably be creaming it in with the returns on their shares and dividends.
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Condolences to all those who are losing their jobs. I know the feeling. It’s a rough time and it won’tger any better.
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As a former crime reporter at the Post, my first job, my thoughts are with the current staff. I learnt so much there and it was a great paper. In my time, and it was only in 2006, it was a daily with crime, court, health, education, local government and business reporters. In addition to this there were gen reps.
It was a great training paper with a printing press and subs on site, a really newsy patch and a fantastic editor.
I am incredibly sad to see it go. I know many people are.
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Terry Emery. Good point re Talking News for the Blind. I volunteer for recording this and know how much blind people appreciate service.
Mind you, we have to rewrite a lot of the stuff because it is so badly written nowadays. All same , cooperation of local papers appreciated.
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If you believe in democracy, don’t believe in capitalism because this shows what market forces think of readers, journalists, advertisers…and communities.
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I find this carnage in TM, JP, and NQ astonishing and saddening because good people are losing jobs.
One day someone will write a book on how the newspaper industry came to bleed to death, and it will not all be down to digital.
There is little doubt some poor editors on papers that needed to get up to date became complacent in the good times (some were promoted to executive positions as their circulations dropped!) but the savage staff cuts have ruined standards of punctuation, grammar pictures and general news gathering. How I wish it was otherwise for those still toiling honestly in the trade. Good luck to them.
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It’s not so long ago that the Reading Post were supposed to be moving out of their building in favour of the TM-owned building on Portman Rd, which was occupied until September by the Reading Chronicle. How interesting that they are not only saving many salaries, but also able to dispose of a lot of costs associated with the upkeep of those buildings.
Having worked for the group of Dickensian employers that owns the Chronicle, I can say that anyone fearing exposure by the media in Reading can rest easy in their beds.
The closure of the Post effectively renders Reading a news-free zone.
Any one-man band could clean up.
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Of course capitalism stinks, it is basically a legal fiddle where we all rip off each other. But who has thought of a better system? One thing is certain, the gap between those at the top and those doing the real work on newspapers is too wide.
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The speed of demise of print is truly astonishing. One wonders if it needed to be so quick, but it is happening. Young hacks, with their IT skills being far more important on websites than writing and news-finding ability, will adjust. But for those people who really love print it is a sad time. I am so glad I worked in the industry when it was so much more professional, though never perfect!
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The problem is, of course, that Trinity Mirror’s regional websites are generally utterly rubbish, as the company expects them to be run on a shoestring with only a couple of posts responsible for getting things put up on line and maintaining the sites.
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I live in Berkshire but have no interest in Reading FC, I now get most of my local news from BBC Radio Berkshire (and in the pub).
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I would be very concerned if I worked in the Trinity Mirror sweatshop at Chadderton, Greater Manchester. The south-east today, the north-west tomorrow.? Where next will this website-only mania spread ?
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It was clear to me when I worked there that this was the route they were going down. As far as TM is concerned it owns all the ‘prime real estate’ in terms of big city papers, and it probably views metropolitan readers as being more web and media savvy, as a result it’s treating its weeklies and smaller dailies like sandbags you throw out of an air balloon.
The readership of a website and of a newspaper is completely different, you don’t need to pay for the site so – be default – you give it no value. I guarantee about 70% of stories on their websites carry derogatory comments underneath about the paper and/or journo who wrote it. This is not a customer base you should be investing your future in, in my opinion.
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Funny old world, isn’t it. The likes of Robert Mugabe shuts down half a dozen newspapers and we call him an undemocratic tyrant. A group of suits (what’s the collective noun? A wardrobe?) does it, and we appoint them to the body speaking for the newspaper industry.
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It’s high-time local paper staff took the example if the brave firefighters they write stories about time and time again.. get out there and strike!
Hit the companies in the wallet! Mind you with staff lining the picket and readers having to send in news, we’re back to square one!
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A sad day and my thoughts go out to all those staff and freelances who will lose out.
I started as a trainee on the Reading Evening Post’s competitor nearly 30 years ago and back then it was a quality broadsheet and worthy competitor.
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Annoyed: When I were a lass, many years ago, no-one bothered with the local paper before they were at least 35. Today’s 20-somethings may well grow to be 40 & want to know more about their local area in depth – only now they won’t get the opportunity. Print may be dying, but it’s not natural causes, it’s murder by short-termist ignoramuses who can’t see beyond the end of next week’s bottom line. It could be saved.
I have a nine-year-old grandson who has just started taking a PRINT publication called First News – a weekly for kids – because he likes the idea of being able to leaf through it…
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Can we all tweet a picture of the newsroom we are in, for posterity.
BBC regional radio have all had a crappy facebook pages telling people about what’s happening, local events and who’s complaining about who etc. Now it seems TM want to degenerate the existing company back in-line with that! Trouble is the BBC will win. I’ve been working in papers (accidentally after graduating) for 8 years and cannot think of another industry sector so poorly run, poorly prepared, and with such a lack of vision. Where will it end? Well you’ve all heard of aboutmyarea.co.uk……don’t google it if you are feeling suicidal.
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TO the list of Black Fridays can certainly be added Friday November 14, 2014, when I heard from a former TMS colleague that the Surrey Herald was to be closed down in December. What a lovely early Christmas present, not!
In all, I learned some seven titles are to go, with the loss of many good hard working journalists, They include young hopefuls trying to make their mark in the business, and others with families to support as well as a chosen career.
But it is the loss of the Herald series that really feels like a kick in the guts.
The Herald, and the Staines and Egham News has been serving the people of North West Surrey well – for more than 130 years.
I was privileged enough to be one of their journalists for more than 40 years, from 1966-2009, when I was unfortunate enough to be among the first tranche of “unavoidable casualties” of the increasing marketing war, with first the free papers and then the internet and social media.
Seemingly every two or three years since then, there have been further announcements of cut backs and mergers, but even then I foolishly and naively believed there would still be a need outside the twitterati world of London, for a good weekly paper to weather the storm – even in a slimmed down form
I am sure many people would advise me to “wake up and live in the real economic world”
But can I really be alone in decrying this loss of history, heritage and community involvement as a shame on our modern society, which knows the price of everything – and the value of nothing.
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I worked in biz before scribbling and I too was astonished at the poor management skills and organisation on newspapers. One office had no record of previous stories carried. I had to stop myself laughing as a junior thumbed through a pile of old papers about four foot high! Some of these managers are now at top level. Shudder!
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If any redundant sales reps are looking at this we need a new rep for our Berkshire areas and one for Surrey. Check out Round&about Magazine – over 1/3 million monthly distribution and rising.
Get in touch.
Luke Maitland – Sales Director
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