Jeremy Clifford is to relinquish the editorship of the Yorkshire Post and Yorkshire Evening Post to become the editorial supremo of publisher Johnston Press.
The move is part of a dramatic streamlining of the regional publisher’s management structures announced yesterday.
Jeremy, left, who has edited the YP and YEP since 2013, will become the company’s first editor-in-chief, with all other editors in the group reporting into him.
The shake-up will also see several senior executives depart with the five current regional managing director roles replaced by two newly-created group publishing director positions.
The two group publishing director roles will go to Helen Oldham, currently regional MD for Yorkshire and the Scottish dailies, and Warren, who heads the North West, Isle of Man and Northern Ireland business unit.
The three other regional MDs, Stephen Plews (North-East and Scottish weeklies), Richard Parkinson (Midlands and South Yorkshire) and Karl Dimmock (Southern England) are all leaving the business.
The changes were set out in an email to staff by JP chief executive Ashley Highfield and an announcement simultaneously posted on JP’s corporate website.
It said the company’s leadership structure was being simplified to ensure “greater cohesion and operational efficiencies across core functions” and to “shift focus away from traditional geographic reporting lines.”
Said Ashley: “Today we are announcing a leadership reorganisation of our business. This is a continuation of the journey we have been on over the last 18 months, focusing on how we grow engaged audiences and connect these audiences with advertising customers.
“We are simplifying our leadership structure to ensure we work more effectively as one team with a single vision. These changes will help us create and share content better across the organisation and speed up how we take advertising products to customers in a more consistent way, in order to deliver overall revenue growth.
“We have appointed Jeremy Clifford as our first ever editor-in-chief. Jeremy will lead a single editorial function across the group, where all editorial team members report hardline in to him.
“This will ensure we deliver a co-ordinated content and audience strategy; leveraging best practice, amplifying group-wide content sharing, championing innovation and equipping our journalists for the digital challenges we face.
“Jeremy – with the support of the Editorial Board – has made huge strides in aligning our editorial teams and driving transformational change in the way we share and deliver content. I know he will continue to build on the excellent work of the Editorial Board in this new role.
“Jeremy will relinquish the editorship of The Yorkshire Post and the Yorkshire Evening Post as a result and details of his replacement will be shared in due course.”
The shake-up will also see the group’s Local Display, Features and Entertainments (LDFE) sales teams consolidated into a single operation led by sales transformation director Neil Pickersgill, who joined JP in June this year.
In his email, Ashley said this would ensure “the rapid acceleration of our Sales strategy, turbo-charge new product launches and support the delivery of a simplified product suite.”
He said the new group publishing directors would “focus on developing revenue streams, developing our core brands to maximise business growth across the portfolio and ensure the execution of strategies is clear and consistent.”
Helen and Warren will both report to group managing director John Bills in their new roles.
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I don’t know about you, but I’m pretty sure this is exciting
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“support the delivery of a simplified product suite” – yup. Sums it up really; “revenue streams’ are king and readers are falling by the wayside thick and fast. Share price continues to tumble and the papers look awful. But don’t worry – the product suite is simplified. Probably into a single ‘exciting’ website manned by one person. In India.
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Hmm… so this is all about streamlining JP’s vision of the future and not just saving three MDs’ salaries. Share price now 44.25 (less than 1p in old money) and market capitalisation has fallen to 46.6m. Desperate stuff.
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Editorial overlord? How long have JP been publishing in Middle Earth?
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I think this is what the City was waiting for.
Let’s see if this announcement will accelerate, amplify, leverage and turbo charge the share price like Moriarty’s digital ad features did the other week?
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Love that word “supremo”, not seen enough these days. Also savouring “report hardline”, “amplifying group-wide content sharing”, “turbo-charge new product launches” and “driving transformational change”, though I’m hard-pressed to think of change that doesn’t have an element of transformation in it. I presume some people have been “rationalised” in this process. Good luck to them.
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It’s that time of year everyone, get the restructures and redundancies sorted so the cost savings are shown in next years already ridiculous budget.
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Perhaps it’s a bid to rebalance the Chief-to-Indian ratio? Not quit there yet, though! Ashley’s still there…
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Life is local, but your MD, editor and marketing strategy isn’t.
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*quite*
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Byegone , it’s five MD’s ‘leaving the business’ I’m betting that their work will be taken up by existing directors. You don need loads of MD’s in a company worth £47m. They should have axed them way before all the rest of the staff. JP papers a so poor now, I don’t waste my money buying my local one as it’s junk, and that junk is on the web before the paper goes on sale. Superb business model.
Let’s hope Jeremy lays down some rules and gets rid of dead wood editors who are accountable for the poor quality. Good luck to him as he has a good reputation.
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“a simplified product suite”
Sounds more like the recipe for a Fisherman’s Friend than a strategy to save a newspaper group.
And JP if you really want to “ensure we deliver a co-ordinated content and audience strategy; leveraging best practice, amplifying group-wide content sharing, championing innovation and equipping our journalists for the digital challenges we face”, try treating your staff a little better.
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Congratulations Helen, hard lines Stephen and fingers crossed for everyone else…..
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Good. Editors? A lot of JP papers do not have one or even an office in their circulation area. They are run by group editors who really don’t do much editing as most people over 50 left in the couple remember it.
Oh, that share price is frightening for anyone depending on this company for a living. But we all know who will be walking out with a nice pile when the smelly stuff really hits the fan in the City as it surely must.
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oops. I meant in the company! the pile of press releases to turn into exciting page leads is drowning my senses. I need an editor but you can’t find one when you need one nowadays.
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The Johnston Press ‘one-size-fits-all’ template does not work with once proud titles like Yorkie Post.
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I am so glad to have got out and watch this debacle from a distance. Another revolution. Old stagers have seen so many. All bungled. Can this man solve the impossible puzzle. Newspaper sales at pathetic levels compared to even five years ago. Web income nowhere near realistic levels. Good luck to everyone in JP.
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Excellent. Another nail in the JP coffin. Anybody who thinks this is anything more than a misguided attempt to rescue the share price is delusional. Ashley is now clinging on by his finger nails as he attempts to save his own skin. He won’t. There’s little left to cut and the big institutional investors have already had their say.
Expect the takeover to come very soon.
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“all editorial team members report hardline in to him.” Oh dear. Where does that mean they stick it?
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Some good people gone in this purge, including three MDs who acted with decency and humaniity. The share price is a disaster. There is no other word for it. A nosedive, with people who put trust in the business (yes, me) four or five years ago losing their investment. Have not heard a whimper from the bosses in designer shoes about that. Small fry for Ahsley but a small fortune to me. What have you got to say to me about that Ashley? Will be fascinated to see what bonuses they award themselves for another failed year of “exciting” initiatives and brutal cost-cutting. No doubt, amid the failure of the big project, enough obscure bonus targets have been met for another enthusiastic handout from the profit line.
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Gosh, really does sound like the end this time. Lots more changes not reported here. Sad.
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No vision, no strategy, no dignity, no idea. That sums up JP. Company should be renamed NJP – No Job Prospects.
Unless of course your based in H/O!
One guy recently at risk ended up with a promotion, a salary increase, a new car then 5 weeks later he is being made redundant again. Disgraceful.
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The writing is on the wall
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Jez can’t have read the press release that contained his announcement because he would be the first one to call b****hit (can we swear here?). If a reporter had turned in that kind of indecipherable management-speak in a story he would have told them to take a walk out of the office and to keep on walking.
First job Jez, a trip around the offices to speak to the reporters. Please listen to what they are saying.
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That elastic band is getting thinner and thinner as it gets stretched to breaking point. It’s called managed decline on the road to total oblivion.
I don’t bother to read my local JP paper (note the lack of the word news) or the website nowadays – there’s more interesting stuff on Facebook these days.
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If Jez is an “overlord” are the remaining editors his “underlings”?
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Idle Rich. You put your trust in Johnston Press? You invested your money in their shares? I’m astonished that anyone with any knowledge of this company could even contemplate such a thing. I just hope it wasn’t a massive amount of money.
I’m no financial advisor (shares can go up or down) but having studied this comany from the inside and outside there is only one way this is going.
As for those offering kind words to the JP execs who are going, give your heads a shake. These were highly paid execs who were more than happy to do Ashley’s bidding. Once they’d done that they were dispensed with. Live by the sword . . .
Save your sympathy for the ordinary staff who have been thrown out the door by JP management as they’ve ruined local papers with their sheer incompetence.
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Of course, Google, Facebook, Autotrader and Rightmove have nothing to do with the demise of the regional press. It was all down to incompetent management? Come on, JP may not be the best of breed but no management can prevent this type of market disruption. And before you say that the regional press should have provided better digital platforms for cars and homes, don’t bother. Motor dealers and estate agents were never going to work with the regional press during the early days on-line – they didn’t want newspapers to hold the balance of pricing power on-line as well as in-print.
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JP share price now down to 44.25 (down almost four per cent) on the back of this ‘exciting’ announcement.
(Nice one Ash).
The folly of the policy pursued by Highfield at JP in recent years is surely now as exposed as the Emperor and his new clothes? Surely?
It was always a flawed theory, every bit as poor as previous chief exec Tim Bowdler’s macho decision – these things always sound good in the boardroom – of lumbering the company with £300m debt by saying: “Shareholders we are going to aggressively expand by buying up loads of newspapers in Ireland!” No doubt applause and trebles all round as they signed the company’s death warrant.
In comes Highfield with what sounds like a plausible plan – better at least than before he arrived, when there was no plan at all – but a doomed plan nevertheless.
And if you’re looking for the reason why all this course of action is doomed anyway, you’ll find the kernel of it in this article here :
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/11/04/no-spooning-isn-t-sexist-the-internet-is-just-broken.html
It should be required reading for every journalist, editor and media manager out there.
Back to the drawing board y’all. What’s left of it.
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‘New revenue streams…’
JP have been promising them for 20 years and we are still waiting
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Appalling (mis-)management at JP is matched only by the appalling standards of grammar demonstrated in several of these posts.
“Your based in H/O” means what, precisely?
It’s time that many of these (presumed-to-be) journalists returned to school…except, of course, that most teachers haven’t a clue either about how to write or speak in correct English.
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Good to see that their ‘journey’ is to become ‘turbo charged’.
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We stand corrected by the censorious Steve Anderson, who has assumed all the posts here are from journalists. The business editor of a well-known national title has a large sign above his desk – “Assumption is the mother of all foul-ups” (or something close). How right that is and how we can all learn from it.
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Sadly, there is worse to come from the stock market, which wasn’t impressed by Ashley’s announcement yesterday.
If you Google Johnston Press in news you’ll find that today Peel Hunt are reiterating a “sell” rating for JP and that they have a 25p target price on the stock, suggesting a 45% downside from the previous close of 46p.
The company, as of this minute, is worth £46.85m. The Peel Hunt forecast doesn’t bear thinking about.
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Sorry to hear what happened to Idle Rich. The only consolation is that you are not alone. An accountant acquaintance with more than 30 years in the investment business tells me that the more the hype a company puts out, the less reliable that company usually is.
With JP publishing enough bull to sink a super tanker in its statements, he wouldn’t touch it with a barge pole.
Successful companies are too busy quietly making money to keep coming out with “exciting” shake-ups as the U.K. big media monopolies do.
The Yorkshire Post has lost readers hand- over- fist in recent years. What sort of confidence does that inspire in investors?
If I was a crewman on the JP super tanker, I’d keep my eye on the lifeboat right now.
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Blimey, a good decision by JP to get rid of some MDs and promote somebody with editorial experience. About 10 years too late, but well done to Jeremy and best of luck – I hope he can turn the editorial side of things around.
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How sad that whoever issues these press releases about newspapers can’t write in plain and simple English
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Shares down another 9% to 42p at 11.30am today
Sterling work Ash
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JP share price had nosedived to 42p at 11am today, down 8.7 per cent. Investors obviously not too impressed with Ashley’s latest masterplan. Hope his salary (and job prospects) are more resilient than the shares.
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Share price at 1.38pm is 42p. Good to see the market has responded as I predicted. Record low follows record low. Well done Ashley. That did the trick.
If you are silly enough to still have JP shares, sell while you can.
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Even the city didn’t like it this time. 42p at time of writing. 0.84 pence in old money.
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I was sorting out my accounts today and noticed my JP employee free shares sale on a bank statement. I made £1000 18 months ago, if I hung onto them they would have been worth about £50 today if I didn’t pay into that stupid share option which was then consolidated.
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Something’s not right here.
Ashley said in his email to staff (published to the world via a shares chat room) following the last round of poor results that the plunge in price to the high 40s was due to several institutional investors selling and that was now over.
But the price is still falling. Surely Ashley wasn’t displaying over-confidence when he addressed the workforce?
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For once a good decision to get someone who knows about journalism at top level instead of over-promoted ad reps. But as in everything JP does, too late. There is going to be a good book in this. The fall of an empire once stuffed with great local and INDIVIDUAL papers, reduced to characterless rags by greed and incompetence. Some of us sat through it all, but the unluckiest are the ones whose futures hang on what JP does next.
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Ashers : “We continue to focus on stemming print decline, and, encouragingly, we are seeing signs that this decline rate is slowing”
That’s all right then. Still losing sales, but not so fast.
Having butchered paper sales in pursuit of fools gold digital now applying the sticking plaster to the open artery. Pure JP.
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My husband is the lucky employee who has been made redundant twice in as many months. Why a company would see fit to see this as acceptable is beyond me. If they knew they were going to make him redundant a second time, they are simply cruel but if not then clearly they have a diobolical management system in place!
New car, new salary and five weeks later another redundancy letter. Unbelievable and it doesn’t happen often that I am lost for words! Why put someone through this twice when it was probably avoidable? This whole situation has now hung over our family for three months.
Merry christmas JP!
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The glee demonstrated by some people on here as the share price falls is shocking.
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Mr Highfield, a master of fancy management speak you may be but no matter how you say it matey, the party is over. God help the poor souls who are still aboard this ship.
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The firm is packed with Neros.
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@ Harry. Thanks for your concern! Well I, probably like you when you worked for JP back in the day, used to top up my income with the very decent yearly share scheme that operated then. You will know the kind of figures any employee could get if they paid in and took up all their scheme options. Still had a chunk of shares when I jumped ship, added a few and then consolidated when the option came around. Should have sold then of course because since then it has been plunge after plunge and now they are worse than penny stock. I stuck with them because many of my mates were still slaving away and I felt part of it. Now hardly anyone left of course, products destroyed. My interest now is not so much what I have lost (c’est la vie) but how much Ash and the designer shoes brigade will reward themselves for the failure.
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@Idle Rich. Not so. I only took the free shares. As well as sacking me and screwing my pension, JP also screwed my shares. I am sympathetic that you’ve lost cash. I guess you were hoping for money for nothing but as you’ve discovered the only winners are those at the very top.
@Michelle. My sympathies. Another illustration of how JP are ruthless and see the company as nothing more than a cash cow for the few at the top. But surely anyone close to the top (your husband?) would know that? Dance with the devil and you might get burned.
My sympathies go to people who have to work for this Zombie comany in these difficult times. Jobs are hard to come by and I can understand why JP staff sit tight and hope the axe won’t come to them. Unfortunately it will be their turn at some point.
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@Do nowt: You misunderstand the tone of the comments about JP share prices. It’s despair, not glee.
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Do Nowt. Gone Gone Gone is right. We all know people with families to support and some really good workers still toiling for this cowboy outfit. There is no joy in noting the share plunge. Just despair that the main culprit will walk away with a nice nest egg. Ain’t that business 2015-style! Those at the top feeding from the trough.
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@Harry. Well, you are happy enough to call people who invested in any shares as “silly” and yet….the JP annual share scheme was open for many years to all, from the office boy upwards. If you trained yourself to invest the maximum £250 a month, as many did, it was painful but you got options which, when flogged, amounted to £6k or so tax free every year on top of your income. I did it from about 85 to 2000. Free money. I would never suggest that anyone not taking advantage of that was silly….
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@Idle Rich. Haha. Trained myself to save £250 a month? I struggled to save £25 a month. While you were buying shares in a zombie company I was buying a big house in the country? Go figure.
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Self-appointed grammar guru Steve Anderson could do with the help of a sub who would change mis-management to mismanagement, understand that in this context one would “speak correct English” rather than “speak in correct English” and would stress that random comments in brackets is poor practice.
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And still no announcement from Cavendish Square around the fact that JP shares are, when you factor in the ‘one new share for 50 old ones’ offer last year, today worth .8 pence!
That would not even qualify for one of those Guide to Penny Shares they used to advertise in the Daily Mail. And some analysts say it could go even lower.
We know Ashley Highfield doesn’t lose any sleep over the share price, because he told us that – but many others are getting a bit concerned.
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Time to say goodbye..
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