A regional publisher says it is “reviewing options” for a daily newspaper’s office premises after putting its existing base up for let.
North Wales daily The Leader’s home, at Media Point, in Mold, has been listed by agents BA Commercial as available to let for a sum of £150,000 per year.
But owner Newsquest says no decision has been made over whether the daily title and its weekly stablemate the Denbighshire Free Press will stay there or move to a new base.
Both titles were bought by Newsquest last year as part of the company’s takeover of NWN Media.
Asked about the decision to list the office as available to let, a Newsquest spokesman told HTFP: “This is a non story.
“We are reviewing several options in relation to office space for The Leader business. We may stay or we may move.”
The Mold site, on the town’s business park, was originally constructed in the 1980s.
Since the Newsquest takeover of NWN a number of staff cuts have taken place at the site including around 20 job losses in the ad creation department after production was switched to Oxford.
Editorial staff in North Wales were also invited to apply for voluntary redundancy at the beginning of this year.
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Business looking to save costs through offloading buildings or opting out of leasehold agreements is pretty much standard practice once the building has become too large for purpose, however having cut staff numbers you can’t help but think this was part of the overall bigger plan: reduce the headcount = office no longer viable for the number of staff employed there, and with NQs track record of takeover> redundancies> closure,you get the feeling this isn’t going to end well for the staff currently located there.
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“This is a non-story”, says NQ. Maybe not for those whose livelihoods may be at risk. Still, NQ, ever the sympathetic employer, will doubtless keep staff up to speed with the progress of the “review”.
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Probably move to some faceless office block out of town. People won’t pop in to tell them a story. Readership goes down. Paper folds. Firm saves money. Or am I being toooooooo cynical.
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To be fair, that building is quite large and looks like it’s already on some trading estate rather than in a town centre. Did it used to house presses which are no longer there? And how many back office staff at the former NWM head office are no longer there if functions have been taken over by Newsquest?
Despite my many criticisms of Newsquest and other large groups for their cost-cutting attacks on local journalism, I’m not so hung up on staff staying rattling around in huge, empty, high-business-rates-paying buildings unnecessarily.
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It is a faceless office block out of town
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It’s on the edge of town, with the feeling of being on a business park. As ‘All Subbed Out’ suggests, it did used to house the press.
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All Subbed Out has basically summed things up. Led to believe the number of staff there is well below both what it used to be and the capacity of the building. A potential move away was rumoured even before Newsquest took over NWN.
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