Trinity Mirror is set to shut a series of four free weekly titles at the end of the month because they are “no longer commercially sustainable”.
The regional publisher has announced it will close the Times series in Kent, which publishes Canterbury, Whitstable, Herne Bay and Faversham editions.
The announcement comes after HTFP revealed last week that the Ely News, Haverhill News and Newmarket News are set to close at the end of this month, while Bedfordshire on Sunday will become a midweek free paper and its companion website will be closed in early October.
In June, the company announced it was shutting the bi-weekly Wirral News because there was “no longer a viable future” for it.
No jobs are at risk as a result of the closures in Kent, and news in the areas affected will continue to be covered by TM’s county-wide Kent Live website.
A Trinity Mirror spokesman said: “Following a review of our portfolio we are regretfully proposing to close the Canterbury Times series (Whitstable/Herne Bay/Faversham) as they are no longer commercially sustainable.
“These markets will continue to be served by our growing site www.kentlive.news which reached an average of 404,000 people a week in August, an increase of 91pc year-on-year, and has a social media following of more than 60,000.
“There are no job losses as a result of the closure. The last edition of the Canterbury Times will be w/c 25 September 2017.”
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Another week another round of closures
TM announced their commercial viability revue some weeks ago and since then have carried out a series of consolidations and closures which to be fair in most cases makes sense, why continue with unprofitable publications which carry high overheads and costs when the numbers don’t stack up, I join other commenters on HTFP in urging other publishers to conduct similar audits of both publications and individuals to weed out those not profitable and potentially causing damage via undue costs to the more profitable parts of the business
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This is bad news if you’re part of the TM Tines series of papers but in reality full audits by ALL regional publishing groups are desperately needed ( well they certainly are were I am!) in order to direct revenue and resources to the ones who have a chance of survival as well as to close unprofitable papers, but just as Iimportantly to flush out the paper shufflers and meeting attenders in the middle management levels.
Too many un productive bosses whose sole aim seems to be to attend meetings or write reports are allowed to remain in place but who add nothing to the business. When times were good there was a need for good managers to direct and plan the sales operation, times have changed and now there isn’t .
if the vast number of managers were reduced, costs would be saved and no loss of revenue would occur. though maybe the lazy option is being taken in allowing them to carry on unchecked and incurring costs then just making even more cuts from the editorial teams.
To do nothing about this obvious costly situation can surely no longer be acceptable
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Hear hear, it’s always good to see local newspapers being closed. I second everything the TM press office staff have posted above.
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Lyrtownmax
Can’t speak for anyone else but I have no associations with TM there’s a clue in my name where I am located
However any publisher that continues to run unprofitable titles draining money week after week is on a crash course to oblivion taking all their employees with them
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‘Unprofitable’ is a matter of how much profit you demand. TM demands the kinds of numbers usually only achieved by arms dealers, people-smugglers and pimps. When I see Simon Fox on a bus, then I’ll know they’re really up against it.
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