New editors have been announced for two of Trinity Mirror’s Welsh titles as the company prepares to roll-out its ‘digital first’ newsroom structure in Cardiff.
The company’s Media Wales division, which includes the Western Mail, South Wales Echo and Wales on Sunday, is to adopt the new ‘Newsroom 3.1’s structure from July.
The new structure is already in the process of being rolled out at the company’s Newcastle-based ncjMedia division, with the aim being to publish all content online first and then reverse-publish the newspaper titles.
However although the Newcastle changes led to the creation of 25 new roles with eight existing roles placed at risk of redundancy, the Cardiff rollout will see no jobs either lost or created.
New roles for (from left) Ceri Gould, Sandra Loy, Hannah Jones and Catrin Pascoe.
As part of the changes, successors have been announced to South Wales Echo editor Tim Gordon and Wales on Sunday editor Simon Farrington, both of whom announced they were leaving last month.
Ceri Gould, currently editor of WalesOnline, will additionally become deputy to editor-in-chief and Western Mail editor Alan Edmunds while Catrin Pascoe becomes editor in charge of daily content and also editor of the South Wales Echo.
Sandra Loy becomes editor of Wales on Sunday and is additionally one of two print publishing editors in charge of newspaper production, alongside Wayne Davies.
Other key appointments see Hannah Jones take on the role of editor, agenda, entertainment and TV while Paul Rowland, who had been seconded to the Newsroom 3.1 launch project in Newcastle, becomes editor, digital development and audience engagement.
Said Alan: “This move is a great opportunity for all of our journalists to enhance their skills and grow our audience even further as we continue to see WalesOnline’s traffic increase at a rapid pace.
“The model sets us up brilliantly to deliver outstanding and engaging content for our readers and advertisers across all digital and print platforms.”
Alan said editors will be holding presentations and discussions with all staff over the next fortnight.
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Yay! Sandra Loy: well over due. Well done.
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OK, now, let’s see if I’ve got this…
The news will appear for me to read free online first and updated all day. That ‘news’ will then be printed in a newspaper afterwards for me to buy? Yes?
Hmm something seems not right there but I can’t quite put my finger on it or am I missing something?
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Online first…followed by the printed versions? Well I hate to be a doom and gloom merchant, but I’d say that spells the beginning of a very rapid end for the papers. And once they go, just watch how quickly the numbers of journalists will go down!
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Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear. After 40 + years in the regional press this headline and story must be one of the most disturbing I have ever read. Where are the trailblazers the real newspaper people I used to work with. The UK Regional press is now in the hands of half a dozen numpties, each fighting to be the last one out and therefore win outright the chance to turn the lights off.
Oh and by the way, it’s not just journalists at risk there are an awful lot of talented people across many departments who help get a paper “off stone” each night.
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This may seem a reactionary thought, but what would have happened had newspapers never even begun the online proposition? Just supposing we had carried on with dead trees and ink, taking the logical viewpoint that people were not (and are still not) prepared to pay for our expensively-produced content online.
Sure, we would still be selling a lot fewer newspapers, and advertising would still have migrated to the web to a great degree. But we would not have devoted so many precious resources to a digital proposition, and the readers would have known that if they wanted what newspapers had to offer, the only way to get that was to buy one.
The justification for giving away our content was if we didn’t ‘do’ online, then someone else would. In retrospect we know that not to be true. Offering a comprehensive local news service can only be done when people are prepared to pay for the product. There never was a digital competitor capable of employing dozens of journalists. But in competing with this non-existent rival, we conditioned our readers into thinking that our product had no value.
So where are we now? Yes, digital revenues are rising, and the user figures for regional press websites are impressive, but what happens when the print revenue dries up altogether? As things stand, digital revenues would not sustain one tenth of the staff and overheads needed to run regional newsrooms, even in their parlously depleted current state.
Yes, we have embraced the digital future, but will we, ultimately, have succeeded only in hastening the moment when the last P45s are handed out in the regional press?
Newspaper managements have spent years indulging in bluff and bravado, pretending they know the answer to the still-insoluble problem of making digital pay. I am afraid they have been merely rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.
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Papers are dying fast guys. The only way news groups will survive is to find a way to make money online. Yes that’ll mean fewer journalists – but at least there will be some
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