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‘Quarter’ of editorial jobs under threat at regional daily

DavidThomson BoltonAround a quarter of editorial jobs at a regional daily are under threat after new cost-cutting measures were announced, the NUJ has claimed.

The union says staff at the Bolton News were told yesterday that 10 jobs are risk under the proposals, with a voluntary redundancy scheme open until next Tuesday.

Three photographers, two feature writers, a news editor, one sport content editor/writer, one content editor, an editorial content assistant and a graphic artist are said to have been put at risk.

But the National Union of Journalists says there are no planned cuts to the news reporting team at the Newsquest-owned title.

Staff working at Bolton produce the six-days-a-week Bolton News, the Leigh Journal and the series of Bury Times Group titles including the Bury Times, Radcliffe Times and Prestwich and Whitefield Guide.

According to an NUJ statement issued today, management are putting the changes down to an “ongoing cost review of the Lancashire business.”

David Thomson, pictured above left, NUJ FoC at the Bolton News, said: “This is a devastating and heart-breaking blow to the dedicated and loyal editorial staff who have been rewarded for all their hard work with just one pay rise in the past seven years and, now, the worst round of redundancies I’ve ever encountered in my 13 years as FoC here.

“I have never seen my colleagues as stunned and sombre as they were following the announcement.”

He added: “The latest accounts for Newsquest (North West), of which Bolton is an integral part, show the company’s operating profit increased from £2.6m to £3.4m and staff costs fell by almost £2m. So, this is a profitable company.

“It seems management must have a different set of numbers. I have asked for the company to fully justify the possible job losses. It is vital they make a tangible and legitimate case and back that up with proper, transparent facts and figures.”

The union says a 30-day consultation scheme has now begun, and that it has asked for the VR application deadline to be extended.

HTFP has requested a comment from Newsquest on the proposals.

22 comments

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  • October 23, 2015 at 12:17 pm
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    I’m very interested in Newsquest’s response to HTFP’s request for a comment, especially as it seems to be a profitable company. Indeed, I’ll hold my breath till it arrives, so I’d appreciate you putting it up on the site the second it drops in. Thanks.

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  • October 23, 2015 at 1:01 pm
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    Wow. Just wow. I went there for work experience as a fifteen year old. A buzzing, bustling, proud organisation. That was twenty-five years ago. I would probably have a nasty shock if I walked into that room now. Sorry to be sentimental, but it makes me slightly sad.

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  • October 23, 2015 at 1:34 pm
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    Well someone has to pay for the latest round of Newsquest’s directors’ salary increases… very sad indeed.

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  • October 23, 2015 at 1:46 pm
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    Unfortunately the newspaper business has been taken over by greedy and incompetent management who have no feel or love for print. They see the savings in production costs which they think digital can provide. But it’s a false economy as selling ads is proving nearly impossible, and if you don’t have ads then you’re giving the news away for free! UGC won,t save them either as that only puts them into competition with Facebook…which is free! To all newspaper CEOs I say… IF IT AINT BROKE… DON,T FIX IT.

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  • October 23, 2015 at 2:48 pm
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    More cuts at NQ and once again it’s the poor folks in editorial who are set to lose their livelihoods. Dedicated journalists, subs and photographers out on their ears while the sales and advertising departments look forward to their Christmas parties. It’s obvious the suits at NQ no longer see their newspapers and websites as sources of news and valuable information that serve their local communities – in stead just platforms to sell their advertising and fatten up the company coffers. Qualified and experienced journalists and photographers replaced be free second-rate UGC and wobbly smartphone snaps tell you all you need to know about how highly the bosses at NQ value their editorial staff. Newsquest’s recent ‘Investors in People’ award just seems like a sick joke…

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  • October 23, 2015 at 3:36 pm
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    This has been Black October in terms of newspaper closures/mergers and job losses. I hope a blacker November and December are not around the corner. But I fear they might be.

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  • October 23, 2015 at 4:05 pm
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    Newsquest exhibit their own brand of kindness when it comes to staff. The sad thing is, a large profit tomorrow will do someone’s career some good in the short term – regardless of how severe the damage turns out to be a little later. Those responsible will have had their bonus and be long gone by then.

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  • October 23, 2015 at 4:46 pm
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    @misterangry The thing is it IS broke and IT IS too late to fix it!
    and advertising doesn’t pay for the news that’s a cover price issue, ad revenues pay the overheads and costs which is a much bigger issue altogether and as the ad revenues are at all time lows this is the crux
    Few readers = poor response to adverts = dissatisfied advertisers = no repeat advertising =poor commercial revenues = the mess we are all in.
    But as ex snapper points out it won’t be the ad teps or their managers who carry the can , more the journalists and photographers

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  • October 23, 2015 at 8:10 pm
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    Dick Minim, seriously, do you ever pipe down? Any ideas how you could save us all? You’re the first to comment on MOST posts on here and the constant of negative and bitter comments. What’s your plan to reinvigorate the local press? I’d love to hear it.

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  • October 24, 2015 at 10:37 am
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    the analysis here is wrong
    a) there is an appetite for local news
    b) companies took a strategy to give it away online

    Aug: Private Eye has highest circulation figures since 1986
    Sept: Editor Ian Hislop explains: “Essentially, we’ve invested in content. There’re a lot more cartoons, and the journalism is bigger and more readable. That’s what we’ve done…
    “If you’re looking for reasons why I think the Eye’s still selling really well, it’s because we invest in more journalism…
    “And what we’ve continued not to do is to put anything online.
    “One thing we did last week – and I gather while I was away it did terrifically well – was this map of offshore holdings… it’s almost like a video game – you go to your street and find out who’s got offshore holdings.
    “And I thought that’s exactly the kind of online thing I am interested in. Because it’s not taking away from what the magazine does.

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  • October 25, 2015 at 10:03 am
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    Will them last one out turn out the lights!!

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  • October 26, 2015 at 8:58 am
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    This horrendous news comes just over a week after it was revealed Newsquest directors had awarded themselves a 26 per cent rise in ‘performance-related payments’ to a third of a million pounds. If this is performance and success I really don’t want to see the failures. Newsquest continue to astound with a ‘ground zero’ approach to producing news with the fewest professional journalists anyone could imagine. How the company expects the people of Bolton and other Newsquest towns and cities subjected to these savage cuts to come running for their products after this is beyond me. It makes a sick joke for our members in Bolton that Newsquest was awarded a bronze Investors In People award just last month. There is no excuse for this. Newsquest is very profitable nationally – in 2014 it made £60 million and is now debt-free – and locally it actually increased profits considerably. Newsquest has failed all its obligations as a business to staff, customers and readers. Its only success has been to expatriate big profits to its American shareholders.

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  • October 26, 2015 at 9:19 am
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    Er, Chris South East, I rarely pipe down (luckily we live in a free-speech society) and fail to see what in my innocuous, if faintly sarcastic, question for a Newsquest response has nettled you. My serious point is expressed perfectly by Ex-Snapper here – ie. the wrong people always carry the can. Is the local press salvageable? Not in its current form of big corporate owners, I fear. Online local news will never yield the revenue to pay salaries and with the rate of circulation decline many papers will be dead soon. The future is small and local, and as suit-free as possible. Time for me to pipe down.

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  • October 26, 2015 at 9:24 am
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    Chris, I am not going to have a go at Mr Minim (glass houses etc),
    but for what it’s worth my idea would be, and there is still time to do it, get some news people at the table when these decisions (and yes they are tough decisions) are being made.

    They should have no more nor less clout than any other contributor.
    Not Luddites, wet blankets or Job’s comforters but just people who know what ‘news’ is, where you get it, how you get it, adapt it to the digital age and for print – and why it still matters.

    Surely even those so-called ‘suits’ (some here do love to throw that one around like an accusation – even I have worn a suit!) can recognise that news, or let’s call it content, is a resource, a raw material and a currency that has real worth.

    Yet those who can actually deliver it are singularly left out of the decision reaching and making process and are always first in line for rationalisation!

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  • October 26, 2015 at 11:50 am
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    I worry about the local paid for press when I hear from a girlfriend that her paid-for weekly does not bother to send sports reporters to local matches, but her little local indie free paper does. That explains all those totally biased dreadfully written reports in most weeklies (I presume sent in my clubs?).
    What hope?

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  • October 26, 2015 at 2:48 pm
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    Seems that @dick has hit a nerve with you @chrisSE
    everyone’s comments and views are appreciated on HTFP even if we disagree with them, it gives those involved or with a view or experience in the matter a platform on which to put their point across which is why it’s such a valuable forum.
    Most regional press companies make decisions that affect the many without any thought to their views or opinions which often price to be far more valid than the policies and plans out in place by the same old same old man within a company do King may he continue to contribute
    As you don’t offer any view or solution just a swipe, Maybe he’s not the one who should pipe down

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  • October 26, 2015 at 3:00 pm
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    Gongoozler
    You really can’t compare a satirical national magazine unique in its fiend with the regional dailies, it’s chalk and cheese
    Whilst I agree with your point about investing in journalists and not putting things in line it’s irrelevant in the context of what’s happening in the regions on a daily or weekly basis.
    I agree that it would be folly to put paid for publications and periodicals in line as they withdraw affect cover sakes and revenues however in the case of a regional paper the news it’s reporting will be readily available from all manner of alternate sources, instantly and for free so that idea is not practical
    Most regionals digital offering is poor enough to say the least without diluting it further and then expecting people to pay for it , they won’t. Far better to improve the quality and content of the printed publication however I think we all agree that’s not going to happen with no one investing money into ailing news papers

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  • October 26, 2015 at 3:02 pm
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    That should read
    ‘would affect cover sales ‘

    Apologies and bring back proof readers I say!

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  • October 26, 2015 at 4:19 pm
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    Analyst – then it’s the fatalistic management of the decline of print then with a hope that minimal franchises can sustain brands/legacies/titles in bedsit operations

    that is an awful position – why not have an alternative future that hails to the past?

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  • October 26, 2015 at 5:53 pm
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    @gongoozlers mate, who the heck in their right mind is going to pay for that model?

    You, and many others in this comment string, are labouring under the misapprehension that people buy newspapers for the news. The last Jicreg report I read suggested that it was around, I think, 20 per cent. The rest was property, motors, jobs, classifieds etc but, guess what… that’s all but gone!

    As Dick says, smaller, leaner operations with no men in suits creaming off the top will allow local newspapers to thrive again.

    They will never be the big machine that they once were but modern technology allows journalists to engage with a much wider variety of people than they ever could before.

    All they need is someone to allow them to get on with it instead of bowing to the commercial pressures of a regional publisher and being forced to write poor-quality, non-local ‘clickbait’ about The X Factor or Lotto results when there are already hundreds of website and bloggers already doing that particular piece of work a hundred times better!

    Leaner models built around local news, local business and which engage with local ‘interest groups’ both in print and online can and do work.

    When big business wakes up to the fact that a huge percentage of their advertising spend on ‘impressions’ and ‘page views’ is being viewed by bots (often created by regional publishers) there will be an almighty storm which results in so much litigation and withdrawal of accounts that most regional publishers will fold immediately.

    We can only hope that it happens before the reputation of local newspapers is not destroyed with their respective relevant audiences.

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  • October 27, 2015 at 1:31 pm
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    Sorry for the couple of typos (the ‘not’ in the last par is annoying). HTFP, for some reason, typing in your comment board via phone is much less responsive than via desktop.

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