Eight editorial posts are set to be cut from six “poorly performing” Johnston Press-owned weeklies, union chiefs have claimed.
The National Union of Journalists claims Johnston Press is to axe the journalist roles at some of its titles in the North-West of England, but that the company has refused to tell staff in the region which ones are affected.
The union says new 40-page templates are being introduced on the papers, which will free up time for remaining staff to concentrate on their titles’ digital operation.
JP weeklies in the North-West include the Lancaster Guardian, Morecambe Visitor, Fleetwood Weekly News, Lytham St Annes Express, Garstang Courier, Longridge News, Clitheroe Advertiser & Times, Burnley Express, Chorley Guardian and Leyland Guardian.
Titles based in Wigan and the southern part of Lancashire are believed to be unaffected.
HTFP understands voluntary redundancy is being offered to all staff across JP’s North-West publishing unit, with the potential for their roles to be filled by under threat journalists at the six affected weeklies.
However, those in key positions may not be allowed to take VR unless suitable people from those six are suitable to back-fill the roles.
A joint statement from the NUJ’s Johnston Press Preston and Blackpool chapels states: “Johnston Press has announced that it is to cut eight full-time equivalent editorial posts from six commercially poorly performing weekly titles in the North-West.
“The titles in question were not revealed to staff by management for commercial reasons, initially leaving many workers in the dark. Management believes new 40-page templates proposed for the poorly performing weekly titles will free up time for remaining staff to carry out more digital work.
“Talks are due to take place between North-West NUJ chapels and management over the proposed cuts, the consultation deadline and the terms of voluntary redundancy. Chapel members said staffing levels are already at critically low levels.
“A health and safety stress survey of employees is being carried out by the union to get a clearer picture of staffing levels and workloads at Johnston Press. Hopes remain that the impact of the proposed cuts can be mitigated by constructive talks between the NUJ chapels and management.”
A Johnston Press spokeswoman said: “To enable us to manage the workload, we are developing our newsroom of the future publishing model to enable us to more efficiently deliver community news content and maintain the profitability of a small number of the titles affected.”
Sign up for our free daily email bulletin
Follow HTFP on Twitter
Got a story? Email the Editor at
It’s JP board members who need to be made redundant. They simply don’t have a clue. A rival with operatives within the company couldnt do a better job in destroying once qualuty papers.
Report this comment
It seems that former SNP leader Alex Salmond is part of a consortium trying to buy the Scotsman. Under JP, sales have slumped to c21k. That is nothing new for JP as it seems that decimating sales is their speciality. Everything JP touch is doomed. The incompetence is astounding. To be brutally honest I would be more successful at brain surgery wearing a blindfold. That may be funny but it really isn’t because that incompetence has destroyed jobs and lives and once proud quality papers. I know because they destroyed my career and also my life. Yet the top brass take their big wage packets and bonusess whilst cutting, cutting and then cutting some more. with JP it is ‘death by 1000 cuts’. In short JP saw £££ signs in digital and promptly threw in the towel on print before evaluating the benefits ….of which there are few. They abandoned print and let good papers wither on the vine. But Despite their protestations..digital is not working. Yet they continue to flog the dead digital horse to salve their enormous pride and egos. Good skilled staff are being thrown on the scrapheap. Sacrificial lambs to the non-existant god of digital success. The future is small, the future is hyperlocal independants. We DO NOT need chinless, transient carpet-baggers destroying a perfectly viable industry.
Report this comment
I wonder what small percentage of this strict 40-page template will be devoted to actual local news unique to each title and how much will be ‘generic content’? JP senior management has entirely lost sight of the purpose of local newspapers (there’s a clue in the name, Ashley).
Report this comment
Ah. The templates. The curse of the modern newspaper. Good luck with that one. We have seen what it has done to the circulation and quality of JP papers.
Report this comment
Dead Digital Horse, those Scotsman figures are worse than they appear, 9975 copies were at full rate, rest are discounted and bulks. https://www.abc.org.uk/Certificates/48553528.pdf
I can imagine lots more redundancies for JP staff as I don’t think any paper is performing well, sadly more to come
Report this comment
Dave S… thanks for that. Those are diabolical figures.
After re-reading the article my temper has flared again. How dare JP describe the papers as ‘poorly performing’. The staff have been decimated, staff photogs have been dumped, the public are being asked to send in pics from mobile phones, offices have moved way off patch, papers are increasingly filled with non local generic rubbish, the templates are a joke and unwarranted prices are driving readers away. It is the management of JP that is POORLY PERFORMING. They couldn’t run a bath!!
Report this comment
PS: If anyone comes on here again saying digital is the future and print is dying I’ll go thru them for a shortcut!
PRINT ISN’T DYING…..It’s being MURDERED by stupid, greedy, know nothing carpetbaggers. Digital has been around for 10 years and still cant make money. If it aint broke then don’t fix it. some of these digifiles would have their breakfast downloaded if they could. The fools that they are only see one side of the story. JP et al are slowly but surely killing the goose that laid the golden egg for a handful of ‘magic beans’. No fairytale ending tho!! Enjoy your Digi-Bacon and eggs Ashley!!
Report this comment
Are we sitting comfortably? Good, then I’ll begin. Once upon a time an ambitious man bought a fine horse, believing it would earn him lots of money. But he bought it with borrowed money, so when his lenders demanded their due, he chopped of one of the horse’s legs and sent them that. It didn’t keep them happy for long, so the following year he had to chop off another leg, then a third the year after that. Suddenly the ambitious man noticed his horse was ‘performing poorly’, barely able to drag itself along by its one remaining leg – a state of affairs for which he entirely blamed the horse. Because he lacked the wit to think of any other solution, he chopped off the horse’s final leg, even though he knew yet another chop could not possibly improve its performance. Not surprisingly, the horse died on its backside. No matter how fiercely the ambitious man flogged it, it could not be revived and he realised, far too late, the error of his ways. There’s a moral to this fairytale.
Report this comment
I am afraid The Dead Digital Horse is looking at print through rose-tinted spectacles.
Back in the late 80s when many regional newspapers were properly staffed and comparatively well funded, the declining circulation figures were a real cause for concern.
That followed by the financial crisis and changing reader habits in an increasingly web-based world simply accelerated the decline into the full-blown crisis of today.
It is all very-well avowing that all things will be well and all manner of things will be well by spending more and more money on editorial resources, but where is the funding to come from?
It ain’t coming from advertising revenues, and it most certainly ain’t coming from circulation revenue. That leaves company profits and dividends, and how long will they fund the expenditure required to take print back to the future?
This policy also begs the question: Where is the evidence that this expenditure will restore those sickeningly low circulation figures to a more viable base?
I fear it will take a lot of wasted money to find out.
Whatever the future of the British regional press, it does not involve rolling ink onto newsprint.
Report this comment
Like it or not Dead DIgital ,digital is the future for accessing news whether local national or world, peoples whole way of getting their news has changed and won’t revert to buying local papers any less never HOWEVER it’s not a medium regional publishers can ever be successful in as they have tried for many years to monetise their own sites and failed miserably.
Printed newspapers are dying , much as we wish they weren’t they simply are, at one time, before social media and the growth in the major players news sites it was the go to medium for news hence thousands of copies sold and a local paper being an essential purchase,now it no longer is as by its very nature anything in a news paper is no longer news and has already been seen read and no doubt moved on from by the time it’s published in a paper , at best, a day later, these days we all want news instantly and to see it unfolding as it happens.
Where local publishers have got it so wrong is believing their offer of news on their own digital sites running alongside published papers would ever be effective, it can’t, if they give it away on line folk won’t buy the papers so they’ve fallen between two posts and have thrown the baby out with the bath water, sacrificing print for low cost online publishing ,old thinking in a new media world ,only now are they realising,albeit too late, that neither of their offerings are wanted and are unable to monetise either to anywhere near the extent they need to to be viable.
Those independently produced papers flourishing are ones concentrating on a hyper local audience with sensible ad rates, unburdened by managers managing other managers and with low overheads and costs effectively controlled.
Not so much murder, more suicide and killed by short sighted decision making which has cost them and their (now ex) employees dearly.
Report this comment
It’s no use raging against the machine dead digital horse, local daily and weekly newspapers as we know them are a dead medium and no amount of anger or wishful thinking wil bring them back, they’re too far gone to revive and the world has changed and moved on.
yes we all know the proprietors, content bods and out of their depth commercial managers have added to its demise and hastened the extent to which the medium has collapsed, yes we know the option to go for the cheap n cheerful free to get RGC above top quality journalism has resulted in thousands no longer buying the papers and yes we know the new tranche of independent publishers committed to providing a true local news service are thriving and running profitable businesses and yes we know the bigger boys have made nothing from digital nor will they do so and yes again we know as revenue is moved from print to digital to hit a target, but to harp back to a time long since past and one to which we cannot return will only cause further anxiety and frustration.
Those who’ve sat back, done nothing but agree with every short term, tin pot strategy put before them and watched the industry collapse these past few years will eventually pay the price by being cast aside with few if any options to turn to once all the other cuts have been made and there’s no one else to let go
It’s just a matter of time, those of us out of it can sit back and watch the implosion we’ve all seen coming from afar
Report this comment
Then there is NO future for any type of local news because digital cannot and will never be financially viable and as you all say, print is dead. Well if digital can’t be monetised what is left? Easy…good quality, value for money print. Just like Ashley and co are trying to force people onto digital news some smaller independents should force people back to print. There has to be a winner. If brave indys refuse to create competition for themselves and only use the net to promote the weekly paper rather than giving news away free then there is a future. It is quite clear that digital does not work as a financial model…so what do we then do? Throw in the towel and get jobs in McDonalds or say… here is a high quality hyperlocal weekly newspaper of which I still believe there is a demand for. In my area there are HQ local weeklies doing things the trad way and I know of two in the same small area that are selling 12K per week each. It’s all about quality and hyperlocal.news and photos. You all think I’m nostalgic for print but believe me I see it week after week after week, quality local news and photos and not competing against yourself by giving away news for free on the net. The internet is generally a good thing but as JP et al have discovered it dosen’t make money. The print route will never suit big publishers who are fixated on profit and shareholders. It’s the smaller indy groups that can make decent (not megabucks) money by doing things the trad way. The JPs of this world have basically abandoned print and local weeklies but their alternative (digi) is a complete failure. Change for the sake of change is the road to nowhere. Digital has failed utterly so either give up on news distribution altogether or give the readers no choice with it’s print or nothing! As far as small towns go a good hyperlocal at a reasonable price will still sell and attract local ads. JP have ruined my local paper but if I had the finances I would set up an alternative in the morning. Big fish like TM, JP and NQ have big overheads and shareholders to.pay …they will never succeed. I am SURE I or a brave investor could make a quality hyperlocal work. The two surefire failures are digital and big plc publishers. The future is small. The future is print.
Report this comment
@DDH
you’re trying to hold back the tide by standing ankle deep in the water and ranting, in local newspaper terms and for the large publishers print is dead.
They’re too weighed down by trying to monetise digital with print processes and too many levels of commercial staff
If they cannot well the papers and can’t sell enough adverts what do they do? Carry on losing money eeek after week?
No, like it or not there’s no future in local papers, their problem is the cannot get their sales reps to monetise these ‘great web fugures’ We keep hearing about on HTFP so what is left fir them?
Downsizing to produce weak papers and websites that aren’t covering costs
So please forget this wishful thinking about breathing new life into print, the small independents sr thriving with low cost overheads but for the bigger publishers their days are numbered so for many of them hanging desperately on in there a job at B&Q or McD are their obj options as all the better independent jobs have already been filled by those they themselves have cast aside
Report this comment
Step one, take control of a local newspaper group.
Step two, introduce Newsroom of the Future to ensure news is no longer hyperlocal or even local in local products, and that quality understandably drops as subbing and oversight goes by the wayside.
Step three, introduce Salesforce of the Future to ensure small local advertisers are ignored and replaced by national brands in local products.
Step four, announce digital is the future and give all editorial content away for free on platforms which cannot generate the cash needed to sustain the products or the wider company.
Step five, wonder why revenue from print products, full of irrelevant and sometimes understandably error-strewn copy and advertising, is leaching away even faster than ever before.
Step six, ruin any brand presence in the digital sphere by printing appalling clickbait stories that have nothing to do with the product’s demographic.
Step seven, wonder why advertisers are leaning away from digital sites which are trying to compete with the likes of Buzzfeed, albeit with a local title.
Step seven, buy a national newspaper and start preaching about the importance of print revenues.
Beyond belief.
Report this comment