Regional publisher Newsquest has unveiled plans to cut up to 12 roles at a group of weekly newspapers in the North West.
Four staff photographers, two feature writer roles and two digital editor roles are among those under threat at the Warrington Guardian and its sister titles in Cheshire and Merseyside.
The plans would see the number of photographers at the Warrington Guardian, Northwich Guardian, Winsford & Middlewich Guardian and the Wirral Globe reduced from six to two, and the removal of the roles of web editor and digital media editor.
Other roles at risk include two content positions and two editorial assistant posts.
Two new roles are set to be created as a result of the changes, a production editor role and a news content editor post.
The plans were unveiled to staff on Thursday in an announcement by regional managing director Chris Hughes which has been seen by HoldtheFrontPage.
In it he said the proposals had been put forward “following a review of the Cheshire business cost base.”
Other titles affected by the move include the St Helens Star, Runcorn & Widnes World, Wilmslow Guardian, Knutsford Guardian, Crewe & Nantwich Guardian and Leigh Journal.
A formal 30-day consultation period on the proposals commenced on Thursday, to be overseen by Warrington Guardian editor Hayley Smith, pictured.
Applications for voluntary redundancy have been invited with a closing date of Wednesday 11 November.
The National Union of Journalists, which is already preparing to ballot its members at Newsquest titles in Bolton over other planned cutbacks, has condemned the announcement.
A chapel spokesperson said: “It’s clear local management don’t want to make these cuts and it is being imposed on them by an editorial director whose entire remit seems to be cutting costs rather than improving our products.
“Under the guise of ‘making us more efficient for the web,’ he has cut our two internet specialists and insisted on savage cuts that will make it incredibly difficult to give our readers in print or online a quality product.
“It will also create an unbearable workload for the colleagues who remain.”
Jane Kennedy, NUJ Northern and Midlands organiser, added: “Staff are completely stunned by this announcement. The Warrington Guardian is an award-winning newspaper with hardworking and dedicated journalists. Their only reward is either the dole queue or a massive increase of their workload, just weeks before Christmas.
“The NUJ hopes Newsquest responds favourably to our request to meet with us urgently to find a better solution for the all these titles in the North West.”
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Photographers hit hard again and feature writers sadly no surprise. But digital roles? I thought these were the vanguard of the local press’s foray into a brave new profitable world, where surely all those “unique visitors” and “click-through’s”, numbered gleefully in the hundreds of thousands by most publishers, are delivering vast piles of cash. Perhaps not, then, and my sympathies are with the people affected here. Good luck one and all and I hope you get new jobs before Christmas.
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So what will applicants for the social media editor role at the Daily Echo in Southampton make of this? Are all digital jobs to go as reporters get more tasks heaped on top of them? It’s certainly a miserable day for those working in the North West. Sympathies with them as they grind through the ‘consultation process’.
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Anyone going for a job with Newsquest needs their head examined.
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If the talk of a Newsquest/JP merger has any substance, all these cuts might make sense. Even Newsquest staffing levels look top-heavy compared to what JP have left themselves with. Wouldn’t it be embarrassing for them to enter a merger looking like the bloated partner, rather than the lean and efficient one? All madness, of course….
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have a lovely weekend Mr Chris Hughes so you’re all fresh for next week’s trip to Blackburn
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And so it continues I went for voluntary redundancy last year at the same time when the Daily Gazette and Basildon Echo photo departments were heavily cut. Good luck to those in the north west.
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Newsquest are a terrible company that have too many chiefs and not enough Indians. It’s always the hard workers who suffer. As a former employee my advice is…get out!!!
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I have noticed that when Newsquest make a batch of people (say 10 to 12 ) redundant they almost always create 1 to 2 new positions….
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With JP worth only about £70m, a merger or buyout by newsquest could happen. Quality is going to plummet with redundancies, sales will drop again, the cycle repeats itself.
You don’t read about Tindle shedding jobs like all these PLC’s
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Having worked for TM and Newsquest it always seemed to me that the latter was several years behind TM in terms of staff cuts. I remember when I first walked into a Newsquest newsroom and imagined a TM director slobbering at the chops at the amount of roles in there they could cut, the likes of picture desk assistants and librarians, so I thought this was always coming.
I think they missed a major trick though. TM has shown its desire to withdraw from local papers outside of the big cities which it pretty much owns, like Liverpool, Manchester and Birmingham, so Newsquest should have gone into the turf that they vacated.
Instead, they’ve merely tried to follow TM in their attempts to just cut, cut cut.
Daft really.
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Will the last Newsquest photographer left, please turn off the darkroom lights :0
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Henry Hoover at it again.
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Damn, the circulation of the papers is falling.
Could that be because the price of the papers have risen? No?
Maybe because the staff have less time to produce stories people want to read because they’re busy churning out schoolboy clickbait or have to do too much with fewer staff? No?
I know! It’s because the papers have too many people working on them. That’s it. Axe more. Now. Only then will the quality emerge and bring readers flocking back.
Sound.
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Oh and I nearly forgot – a warning to Newsquest. Ad-blocking software is on the rise and now Apple is allowing it for Safari on iPad and iPhone. Watch those profit margins plunge. As for journalists: group together, go on Kickstarter and get a new journalism model going in your area then leave en masse.
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The unvarnished truth is that Newsquest along with all the other UK regional newspaper publishers do not expect sales to increase ever again.
The same is true for advertising revenues.
It’s called, as most of us all know, “managing decline” – a phrase minted by Trinity Mirror some years ago.
The problem is the way they’re now going about managing the decline is guaranteed to accelerate it.
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Agree Bluestringer, local papers will never be what they once were, however, I still think there’s a future for good quality weekly papers.
Instead of trying to compete with Twitter for ‘up to the minute news!!!’ they should instead be run along the lines of magazines. They should contain local features, pieces of interest that the big news boys aren’t interested in, good picture spreads, sports coverage of local leagues etc – the stuff that used to make these newspapers so well loved.
I don’t know anyone my age (mid 30s) who reads a newspaper anymore, but I know people who spend £5-£20 a month on magazines. Why? Because it’s a way of consuming entertainment in long form in a way you wouldn’t do on the net, they’re also usually well designed and edited with good pictures.
Would someone who buys, say, 442 or Empire magazine, still buy those magazines if their staff were replaced by glorified interns who weren’t allowed to go to the cinema or to football press conferences because of dwindling resources? Or if the pictures were user generated – such as a snap of the back of Daniel Craig’s head in Hoylake to go with a feature on James Bond?
No, and rightly so.
The elephant in the room here, which we all know, is that the people at the top of the newspaper industry simply don’t care whether their rescue plans will work or not, they’re not planning to be there long enough to find out, that’s why they ooze doublespeak at every turn. Grab those Twitter followers, crank up the SEO, I’m waiting for my payoff and a cushy job at the DWP press office.
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