Reporters will partially work from a library after a weekly newspaper announced it is to leave its offices.
The Ilford Recorder is set to quit its current Media House home on High Road, Ilford, in the New Year, with staff set to be based at a new office in Barking alongside sister title the Barking and Dagenham Post.
The move to Maritime House, Barking, which is around 2.5 miles away, will see Ilford Recorder reporters working once a week from Redbridge Central Library at designated times, after discussions between the newspaper and Redbridge Borough Council.
Other “hot desking” sites on the patch are also being sought for Recorder journalists to work from.
The move was announced in a piece on page two of Thursday’s edition by Chris Carter, who has edited the paper for 20 years.
Chris, pictured above left, moved to reassure readers that the move would not mean the Recorder “will not have a presence in Redbridge, far from it”.
He added: “The march of technology means reporters can work remotely from almost anywhere, so, besides having a presence in Ilford, we are actively exploring hot desking sites in other areas of the borough.
“As the only quality newspaper to cover the whole of Redbridge, the Recorder will remain at its heart, supporting and campaigning for the community which we have served for 118 years.
“We will continue to champion causes and charities such as our Christmas appeal for the Indigo project run by Barnardo’s Barkingside and campaign on issues dear to people’s hearts.
“That is in our DNA – our first big appeal was in the 1930s when we raised money for the building of the old King George Hospital in Newbury Park. And nothing has changed during the years that have passed.”
The move to Barking is set to take place on 9 and 10 January.
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Writing should present no problems but what about phone calls disturbing the peace of library users?
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Always feel sorry for editors being forced to spout this spiel by the company men, let’s call it what it is – cuts for profit.
Technology has got nothing to do with it – the news room IS the best thing about journalism. Shared knowledge, discussion, fun, without that it’s just a job, a lonely one at that.
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You will never get as much done hot desking somewhere as you would in a news room. Pressure of deadlines, shared contacts, talking through a story, swapping opinions, that is the whole point. A cut here or there may keep you in the black for a year or two longer but sooner or later the sales drop even more and you have to cut something else.
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“We are actively exploring hot-desking sites in other areas of the borough” – as opposed to passively exploring them, I presume. What a farce and a terrible day for reporters who will now work in an isolated and isolating environment, as some have noted.
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Why should ratepayers fund this company when it has no interest in the area it serves other than to make £
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sssssssssshhhhhhhhhhh! this is a library!
I love the “positive spin” this poor chap has been forced to put on it about hot desking and championing causes when you know that he`s as embarrassed as the rest of the staff, it really is Archant cost cutting at its finest under the old “One Archant ” mantra and another backward step for jeff henry making the business the best in the uk blah,blah,blah
I`m surprised they haven’t turned the high street building into an ice rink!
give it time
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Likely the first occasion – and hopefully the last – when someone uses ‘partially’ in an intro.
Sadly, am sure we’ll be seeing more of the desperately cliched ‘in our DNA’ claptrap.
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I scanned this thinking it was yet another Johnson Press farcical office shutting announcement until I read employee x’s comment!
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Let’s hope a commercial company does not take up valuable space and resources that should be available for the public to use. If they are allowed to sit down, they should be required to offer their seats to anyone who comes into the library.
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Look on the bright side, at least they won’t have to spend all week in Barking.
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If the Ilford Recorder is moving, I imagine the Romford Recorder, Newham Recorder and all the others will be moving as well, they’re all based in the same place.
At least it gets reporters out of the office and onto the patch though. If police, councillors and MPs have surgeries at regular times, why not journalists?
Whether a library is the most appropriate place is another matter. Perhaps a contra deal with a coffee shop or even a pub would have been better.
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It could be worse, though not much. I know of a weekly that now has its office (which might or might not be staffed) on the first floor of a commercial building. People with stories and ads can’t get in without ringing a bell or ‘phoning to make an appointment. It used to have a High St. presence, and it used to have news.
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I once ” partially” worked from a place selling hot pies in the 80s. I got fat but had few callers and it all failed. What goes around…..
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Our office closed a couple of years ago in a similar scenario. We were also told to be mobile journalists, working from our cars and various parts of the town. What actually happened was we all just either worked on our kitchen tables or worked from the centralised newsroom nine miles away because, what journalist wants to work in a coffee shop?
Despite similar promises to our readers, we don’t now have a presence in the town. Our sales are through the floor and, worse, people have just stopped calling us because they simply don’t know who to call.
You can pretend nothing will change, you can even convince yourself (I did, for a while) but in reality, this is the beginning of the end.
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Good old Archant and their quest to become the country’s best regional news group decide to shut the ilford offices and ship the staff out to a public library,such is the contempt they obviously hold the staff and community in in that neck of the woods
Surejy it can only be a matter of time before more Archant branch offices are closed and the staff are herded into central locations or told to work remotely in order that the high cost of offices against the low value revenue returns from the branches can be justified.
Mr Henrys bold and farcical boasts are looking more ridiculous with every ice rink, investigstions unit, amateur tv station and now library hot desk nail that’s being driven into their coffin on a far too frequent basis.
Invest seriously in the business or close the parts that aren’t working if you want to give yourself a chance of staying afloat.
2016 will be an interesting time for Archant and the poor souls hanging on in there.
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Barking bonkers!
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It’s only a shame there aren’t more public phone boxes around these day. You could fit two or three hacks in there I’m sure.
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This isn’t new though, is it?
This concept was being played with nearly ten years ago, shortly before the recession really started to bite.
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It just doesn’t work. Tried it – and zilch. Apart from that people will go into a local paper office to tell reporters something without wanting to be named as the source. They can hardly do that in a public library.
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Did this for a while after they shut our office on patch and moved us ten miles down the road. Didn’t work. Although it did mean you could slope of early to the pub at the end of the day, so swings and roundabouts.
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“My aim is to make Archant the best regional press group in the country” ..and to do so I will shut branch offices and move the staff to a library ( check on line for library opening hours) get the reps to work out of their kitchens and in lay-bys via laptops,invest in a skating rink and a parochial tele station that no ones watching and has only lost £657,000 in its first year and remove all evidence of our two ailing Norfolk papers from the head office building.
Yet the editor attempts to divert attention by banging on about raising money and championing causes.
Oh dear, oh deary deary me
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Closing a district office and ‘squatting’ in a public library
I can remember the days when Archant was a credible company, well run, with pride in Itself and with a future
However I have a very long memory
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So what happens when the council closes the library or cuts its opening hours? I suppose there’s always the public lavatory there’s plenty of seats in there.
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A commercial operation being run out of a public building? is this legal?
not sure local tax payers would want a newspaper group freely using the facilities they are paying for?
This presumably means that other publisherrs,commercial busineses and the like can hot desk there too?
precednet set and something the Archant investigations unit needs to be investigating
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At least they have staff on the patch. A lot of papers are cut and pasted together from e mails 20 miles away from the action. Shhhhhhhhh!
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