Plans to close a weekly newspaper leading to possible redundancies have been announced by Johnston Press.
JP says it is considering proposals to close the East Lothian News, which also includes the Musselburgh News, as part of a review of its print portfolio.
The plans would leave “a small number of roles” at risk of redundancy, and come after the company closed 11 newspapers as part of its ongoing cost reduction programme earlier this month.
It has further been reported that the free St Helens Reporter has gone digital only, as part of the programme.
JP has also merged several titles, with the Hebden Bridge Times and Todmorden News now published as a single print edition.
The Dewsbury Reporter and Mirfield Reporter have also combined, while in Northern Ireland the Ballymena Times and Antrim Times merged in the summer.
Also in Ulster, JP has axed the Sunday edition of the Derry Journal, which ran for the last time on 4 October.
A statement by the company reads: “The East Lothian News (including the Musselburgh edition) may close as a result of a current review of JP’s print portfolio.
“Its future is currently being considered and staff have been informed that a small number of roles may be placed at risk if the proposals to close the title go ahead.
“A decision will be made in due course and staff updated accordingly.”
“The last edition of the Sunday Derry was on 4 October and the Ballymena Times and Antrim Times merged around the same time to become the Ballymena Times and Antrim Times.”
Alison Johnstone, a Green Party Member of the Scottish Parliament for Lothian, has called on the company to rethink its plan.
In a statement, she said: “I’m urging newspaper owners Johnston Press to rethink their decision to close the Musselburgh and East Lothian News titles.
“This is a dreadful decision by Johnston Press, both for readers and for staff, and adds to the already brutal cutbacks at the Edinburgh Evening News. Our communities deserve good quality local information and investigation, and a vibrant local newspaper scene is crucial to that.
“I have asked Johnston Press to explain their reasoning behind this shock decision and for assurances about the future of the skilled staff at these titles.”
“The online media age should mean more local content, not less. Cutting staff and titles is a false economy, and I urge the owners to rethink their decision.”
On 7 October eight small free titles closed altogether, with a further three titles integrated into paid-for titles.
HTFP has asked JP to confirm whether any further merges or closures have taken place, or are planned, at its titles across the UK.
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Same old, same old…………..More exciting developments for JP.
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This is death by a thousand cuts, but then it is coming up to Christmas, the traditional time when JP wields its scythe.
Share price down to 74p on this ‘exciting’ news and trades a sea of red in the last 14 days as stock is dumped.
Don’t think it will be long before we hear about a merger.
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Sadly tis the season to be ….culled
Sign of the times and it’s clear we will see more closures across the industry as more and more papers lose their readerships and commercial revenue / client bases and become unprofitable .
In many ways it shouldn’t come as a surprise as no business can sustain continuous revenue losses which is the case across all local press groups, the sad thing is it’s never the ones higher up who’ve overseen the failings who are affected, just the plods on the ground
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No amount of pleading will make a jot of difference I’m afraid as to be fair to JP its a business decision that is based on supply and demand, if copy sales are falling and ad money’s in decline it makes no sense at all to throw good money after bad,too many RO groups are doing just thus and putting their groups in jeopardy
But maybe if people supported the papers in the first place m they wouldn’t be in decline and facing closure
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Newsflash, Alison… they won’t listen, they don’t care. All JP sees is the bottom line. And soon it will disappear up its own bottom. Very sorry for all the staff involved, get out now while you can, save yourselves the hassle and grief of walking to the executioner’s block.
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Unless a rich benefactor comes in ( yes it’s it’s not going to happen is it) no business, newspaper or otherwise ,can continue to work if the product is not wanted and clearly papers with falling copy sales and low ad revenues face closure, why would anyone prop up and put money into something no ones buying ? Doesn’t make sense.
Whilst we may not like it ,any business producing products that people dont want and that are losing money have no real option but to close them.
We can talk about lack of investment,bad management the chase for profit over quality and dumbing down and all are relevant points but we are where we are and if the markets gone and things aren’t covering costs and profitable then there’s only one option:closure.
The bigger question here is why so many regional press groups continue to put out papers that no one wants and by propping then up out the better performing parts of the business( if there are any?) at greater risk. With Thousands of lost readers, businesses walking away m and advertising elsewhere and that are losing money yet incur huge overheads where’s the sense in keeping going ?
Perhaps we should look at the many targeted competitor publications that are thriving in traditional RP territories and take a leaf out of their books, most are staffed by the better ex RP people who have experience contacts and a vision and whose businesses aren’t encumbered by huge luxury overheads ( top heavy management structures , expenses, company cars, paper pushers, deadwood staff and departments ) and whose products have found a market, usually one that the big boys no longer serve.
Worrying times and sadly a sign of more to come as the reality of underperforming papers that are not profitable and thus viable hits home with only one real course of action left to them.
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Just the latest in a long line of blows delivered to JP staff during the past few years, chiefly as a result of incompetent and arrogant senior management who are obviously not fit for purpose. A far-too-hasty dash to put all their eggs in the new media basket, thus severely damaging the golden goose (newspapers) has been JP’s downfall. Time someone handed Ashley Highfield the pearl-handled revolver.
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Sadly, I agree with Richard – the “product” simply isn’t wanted in any great quantities now and the digital revolution has drained away its commercial lifeblood. As a spotty youth in the late 60s/early 70s I delivered a well-known south London paper on Fridays that at least trebled the weight of my bag – and most of that was made up of bulging jobs, property and motor sections (ie. cash). The same paper is now a ghostly waif deprived of everything, bar good journalism, that once made it such a success. That this process is still presided over by avaricious senior suits with no real interest in trying to turn things round is a disgrace, but one we’ll have to live with until the last newsroom door is closed and we all join the vanished worlds of ostlers, farriers and petrol pump attendants.
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The point is Delboy, while all these cuts continue, while the once proud and respected local titles are reduced to meaningless babblespeak about DIY, gardening and insurance for the over 50s, the share price is back to penny stock ( taking the re-financing and ‘share consolidation’ into account). Amid all this failure and disaster, and thousands losing their jobs, Ashley Highfield has been rewarding himself and his top team (via a committee that likes to say “yes”) with huge pay, pension and bonus packages. He is the last person to take the pearl-handled revolver. He is doing very nicely thank you.
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analyst. “But maybe if people supported the papers in the first place m they wouldn’t be in decline and facing closure”
But they were! My paper was thriving. JP cut the staff put the price twice in a year did a pathetic redesign and then started running the paper from somewhere else.
The story must be the same across the country. Don’t blame the web for everything folks. If papercide was a crime some JP bosses should be in the dock.
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If Ashley took the pearl-handled revolver, he’d probably miss.
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Maybe some entrepreneurial start-ups will launch to fill the gaps. Hope so.
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WHY are commentators on here blaming the public. People aren’t buying papers because of the drastic drop in quality caused by cuts and management greed/incompetence. Lower quality and raised prices is a sure fire way to ruin! Asking the public to send in their own photos etc and then pay inflated prices to see them is madness. Management haven’t just got it wrong ….they’ve got it COMPLETELY and DISASTROUSLY wrong. It’s criminal what has happened to one proud papers. NO.. It’s not the public to blame it’s incompetence and obscene greed by managements.
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@Richard has it
None of us want to see once proud and weighty quality local papers close but in the cold light of day unless they’re profitable and popular they’re always going to be under threat. Like @dick I too remember the days of heavyweight papers full of the finest news views comment and good looking lucrative adverts and when we had to pay the delivery boys extra due to the weight of delivering them.
Those days are long gone for all the obvious reasons; digital news 24/7 as it happens, over priced paper/ cover price hikes trying to compensate for lost commercial revenues and falling copy sales, lack of investment in the papers and staff,bad decisions by the suits looking to jump on the next big thing or passing bandwagon and that have seriously dented the coffers ( think the infamous Mustard tv at archant ) and a whole host of other causes.
Sad fact is the times have changed and we can’t return to those good old days so need to accept what we can’t change and try to change the things we can from within the industry starting with finding new markets and developing products to fulfill the need.
Competitors are doing it so the opportunities are there.
Those of us in the industry know it’s all about managing decline now.
Closures will become a frequent event month by month but don’t let the suits fool you into believing the futures digital,clearly it isn’t as no ones found a model that works despite throwing money in that direction.
Not only do I see papers closing I see a time when local newspaper groups vanish too, there’s not enough interest in newspapers as we know them and most RP boards are too entrenched in the old ways, the old methods and are encumbered by red tape and protocol and appear clueless as to what to do next.
I also agree with Richard about learning from the local magazines that are succeeding
The regional big boys could do worse than to meet with the more successful local media owners ( the ones who’ll actually speak to them after the big boys have done all they can to close them down and rubbish their products) to see if their business models can work for them and to learn why they’re profitable at s time when they see not.but as has been said ,until they start offloading the deadwood and ballast, rid themselves of uxury overheads and sort out the low levels of customer care due to unprofessional sales people they’ll never move forward and the continuing spiral of closures will remain
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I have every sympathy for the JP staff affected who I’m sure have always worked extremely hard and are loyal and committed to their titles but the sad fact is, putting aside any issues with management, people can get all the news they need online and without the rich vein of advertising from property, motors, jobs and notices the outcome is inevitable.
Its all very well Alison Johnstone, Green Party Member of the Scottish Parliament for Lothian, calling on the company to rethink its plan but sadly these titles are not wanted by the very people they once served and any amount of investment will not get the titles back to where they once were.
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Have to laugh when they say under review as clearly they have already decided to close them , many more to follow over the coming year , sales are dropping everywhere , its a matter of when and not if that a major daily will fold.
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Am I the only person to think that all these cuts are just a way to make the share price as low as possible so JP looks an attractive prospect to be taken over?
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Mr Angry2 asks why all the people on this comments thread are blaming the public. I would like to know what thread he is reading…..no-one has blamed the public.
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Instead of chasing dreams and throwing large sums of money at the next big thing ( whatever that might be this week)
more regional press groups should invest,or have invested in improving the content of its papers,the quality of its staff and the businessmindedness and professionlism of its sales people (those that have not been shown the door already)
If the quality of the publications were better and were reaching more local people in the catchment areas they serve,thus bringing response to the businesses advertising,then much of the huge losses in copy sales and lost revenues could have been saved or damage limitated. when the audience is walking away is not the time to be weakening the product further.
Whilst copy sales will continue to fall due to the ways people access news ,the fact that many local papers are pushing out dire content,suffed full of awful adverts sold cheap just to hit some targets and bonus payments and without sight of getting response for the advertiser or interest and value for the reader is adding to the number of people who are turning their backs on a local paper,
couple in the price rise hikes which are also stiflng sales then you have the picture we are all too familiar with,notably papers facing closure and jobs being cut to fund cost savings.
whilst we will never see the glory days of bumper papers,top quality content and investigative journmalsim on behalf of local people, return,we could have prevented the rapid slides by early investment and keeping our cool,instead at the first sign of a problem and profits beginning to slide,the top tablers stop all investment,lay off staff and take the cheap and easy option with regards to staff quality,this has been the case not just in the editorial department but in sales as well.
Its telling that so many ex regional press staff have started up their own competitor publications (staffed with ex colleagues usually) by doing what the bigger players used to do before greed and panic set in, notably find an opportunity thats been left by the bigger boys,produce something of quality and value with low costs and build from that,it must work as so many are doing it and taking revenues.
Always sad to hear of another closure or merger but who is really surprised?,its just the result of bad decisions,short termism and the fruits of the labours of some of the greedy,out of their depth MD/CEO/FD/Sales Managers running the industry nowadays,yet who will no doubt manage to sidestep any fallout.
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Time, I think, to nail the lie that the local press is no longer profitable. I can’t speak for JP (though there must be money in the business somewhere if this Highfield person everyone keeps going on about is so handsomely rewarded) but I know for a stone-cold fact that my local newspaper group is consistently recording profits in excess of 30 per cent, a figure for which pretty much any other kind of business you care to name would kill its grandmother and wear her skin as a playsuit. It’s simply that the profits are not invested in the business because the business is run solely for the benefit of shareholders who have no special commitment to newspapers and would just as readily put their money into landmines, child porn or heroin if they thought the risks would be lower and the returns higher. Those are the sorts of people the management serves, so I’m not entirely confident appealing to their better natures is likely to be especially fruitful.
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More cuts on the way, surprise, surprise. Underpaid freelance journalists are being shafted. Again.
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Shares now under 70p. Or 1.4p when the x50 move is taken out of the equation. Well done Ash and Co. You’ve ruined hundreds of newspapers and wrecked hundreds of lives. Still, enjoy your personal fortunes accrued along the way.
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