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Content managers depart as regional publisher axes roles

NewsquestSix staff at a series of daily and weekly newspapers have taken redundancy in the latest round of cutbacks by a regional publisher.

Four content managers and a news editor left Newsquest Wiltshire last week with an editorial administrator set to join them at the end of this week.

Newsquest Wiltshire operates the daily Swindon Advertiser, as well as weeklies the Wiltshire Times and the Gazette and Herald.

Content managers Joe Polizzi, Andrea Ball, Amanda Pawlak and news editor Anne Richards worked their last day at the group on Friday, along with another content manager who does not wish to be named, while Trowbridge-based administrator Rita Sangster will leave the business this coming Friday.

The move comes after six redundancies among photographers and the picture desk at the Wiltshire titles were revealed in June.

Staff photographers were cut from six to two and the picture editor and picture desk assistant roles also disappeared.

In an announcement to staff, seen by HTFP, group editor Gary Lawrence said: “As you all know we have been consulting with members of editorial staff in Wiltshire on a proposal to make four content manager posts, the post of news editor in Trowbridge and a post of administrator at Trowbridge redundant.

“All of them have given unstinting service and dedication over many years and they will be missed. I’m sure everyone will join me in wishing them well for the future.”

Earlier this summer redundancies announced at other Newsquest titles in Oxford, Bournemouth and Berkshire, leading the National Union of Journalists to describe it as “another summer of sackings” by the company.

Newsquest Wiltshire has yet to respond to HTFP’s request for a comment.

26 comments

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  • September 2, 2015 at 8:51 am
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    “All of them have given unstinting service and dedication over many years.”
    Yeah, and just look how they have been rewarded for said dedication.

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  • September 2, 2015 at 8:53 am
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    After a quiet couple of weeks during the dog days of summer on the firings front we return to depressingly familiar ground for HTFP. As we go into the last third of 2015, I recall my dire predictions made here at the end of last year. The reality has probably been worse than I feared. Good luck to those affected here.

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  • September 2, 2015 at 8:58 am
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    “All of them have given unstinting service and dedication over many years and they will be missed.”

    And your point is?

    And – so now Content Managers are deemed redundant just a couple of years after the ‘role’ and ‘title’ were spun out of thin air at a strategy meeting somewhere?

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  • September 2, 2015 at 9:16 am
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    How can you produce a newspaper without an editor? Sorry – content manager?
    There is no way that the Mumbai subs will be able to tell if Mrs Worthington has put her daughter on the stage in The Bush or if she’s staging an impromptu outdoors experience in the bushes.

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  • September 2, 2015 at 9:46 am
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    What does (did) a content editor do?

    Does it mean sub, like what we said in the old days?

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  • September 2, 2015 at 9:47 am
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    To be replaced with what? A wall chart?

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  • September 2, 2015 at 10:07 am
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    Luka fires out a good question. Why should our industry lose its vocabulary to those of marketers and promotions bods? However, I am a news content transformational-contextualisation executive these days, so perhaps they’re right.

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  • September 2, 2015 at 10:10 am
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    No, not a wall chart – the wall chart will be online, managed by a wall chart content manager in Mumbai.

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  • September 2, 2015 at 10:16 am
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    Not a good day for content in these publications, and probably not a good day for journalism.

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  • September 2, 2015 at 10:24 am
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    Presumably they are all now discontent managers?

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  • September 2, 2015 at 11:16 am
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    The moral of this story must be that whenever you are given a new (meaningless) title watch out ….your P45 is just around the corner!
    In Newsquest’s caee, the situation is hardly surprising as they are a Transatlantic outfit anyway and Yanks are the Kings of Euphemism (read bull****) as we all know only too well.

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  • September 2, 2015 at 11:19 am
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    It’s unfortunate – or, on reflection, perhaps it is not – that the headline for this depressing story is adjacent to an advertisement for…a content editor.

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  • September 2, 2015 at 11:27 am
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    JP and Newsquest should be ashamed at sending jobs to India, to the detriment of our own local economies.

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  • September 2, 2015 at 11:39 am
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    I remember when subs were replaced with content managers. And now they’re no longer needed in turn. I’m constantly amazed that Newsquest still finds journalists to make redundant. Eventually the whole company will consist of three minimum wage slaves in a shed in Newport. Or just one multi-tasking, overworked individual. Step forward, Fred Newsquest.

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  • September 2, 2015 at 11:51 am
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    I am sorry to say, and these might be exceptions, that content editors (as I knew them) are nothing but over-worked production monkeys and nothing like proper editors, through no fault of their own. A lot of rubbish got through.
    I am sorry these folks have lost their jobs, especially as they seem so good at them, according to management.
    What next in the great journo cull that never seems to end?

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  • September 2, 2015 at 12:02 pm
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    First they came for the sub editors, and I did not speak out—
    Because I was not a sub editor.
    Then they came for the editors, and I did not speak out—
    Because I was not an editor.
    Then they came for the content editor and I did not speak out—
    Because I was not a content editor.
    Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.

    With apologies to Martin Niemöller

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  • September 2, 2015 at 12:06 pm
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    Judgement, history, context, taste, audience awareness and local knowledge no longer commercially viable values in Wiltshire then, I take it?

    Which of course may be true. So then, who’s next? Of all the job losses announced this year, this one seems more than anything to be destroying the very reason for the titles’ existence.

    Its wrong to think of the death of newspapers as like a heart attack, fast and sudden. This is emphysema, years of choking to death with an inevitable outcome.

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  • September 2, 2015 at 12:10 pm
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    The fools at the top have moved on from rearranging the deckchairs on the Newsquest Titanic and are now getting rid of the people at the oars of the lifeboats.

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  • September 2, 2015 at 1:46 pm
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    Looking ever more likely that there will be a merger between JP and Newsquest.

    Both have been accelerating dumbing down content and getting rid of people who know what they’re doing in the last few months.

    I’m sure there are more exciting opportunities ahead for the top brass to trouser a few hundred thousand in merger bonuses.

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  • September 2, 2015 at 3:27 pm
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    Er, anyone else notice that the same Newsquest Wiltshire that is making a news editor redundant is also advertising for a news editor at The Swindon Advertiser? How do they swing that one past employment law?

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  • September 2, 2015 at 4:13 pm
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    Ominous, but true, Ex-JP sub. Ominous, but true…

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  • September 2, 2015 at 4:50 pm
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    So the occupation of Content Editor could soon be joining those of lamplighter and sedan chair carrier in the land of obsolete jobs. As they say, time and axe-wielding bean counters wait for nobody.

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  • September 2, 2015 at 5:46 pm
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    So the nonsensical content editor title is soon to be history. I can still recall some of the managerial brains who thought that one up. Clowns.

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  • September 3, 2015 at 10:44 am
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    It is only a matter of time before a whizz kid comes up with a job title of “chief reporter” and the growing band of yes-people declare: “Great, super, this is exciting and will put us back at the cutting edge without costing us a penny.”

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  • September 3, 2015 at 3:09 pm
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    Super! How about ‘news editor’ and ‘features editor’ as job titles? Just thought I’d run it up the flagpole and see who salutes, CJ!

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  • September 4, 2015 at 8:49 am
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    People taking on these new fangled job titles/roles should learn from this. It could leave them more open to redundancy if the number crunchers decide the experiment isn’t working.

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