Mirror, Sunday Mirror and People axing 200 jobs
From the Guardian's site...
Mirror national titles to lose 200 jobs as papers move towards digital future
Trinity Mirror is to make 200 editorial staff across its three national titles -the Daily and Sunday Mirror, and The People - redundant.
The job cuts come as the company announces the creation of new multimedia newsrooms linked to the introduction of its web-based content management system, ContentWatch.
Some 30% of the 200 people who will be made redundant are casuals, meaning that 140 full-time posts are to go. Given that the total staffing across the three titles is 554, it means an overall reduction in journalistic jobs of more than 25%.
In an era of widespread job cutbacks by newspaper publishers, it ranks as one of the largest single redundancy programmes by any group. It will involve reporters, writers and photographers losing their jobs as well as sub-editors and some desk editors.
The cuts have been made possible by what the company calls "the successful implementation of ContentWatch", and are said to herald the papers' move towards a digital future. Its statement says:
"The new system and processes enable the production of high quality content across multiple channels while ensuring each title retains its quality, integrity and unique identity. Importantly each title retains its own editor."
Along with the internal production changes, some areas - such as the back-of-the-book "furniture" - will be outsourced, possibly to the Press Association, though no firm agreement has been reached.
News and feature departments will be merged. Football writers will be formed into a pool to write for all three titles. And the print and digital teams will be merged. It also means the end of editionising the Mirror titles in Scotland.
A senior Trinity Mirror (TM) executive referred to it as "a massive step change in how we go about the business of publishing our papers."
There was shock when the three editors - Richard Wallace (Daily Mirror), Tina Weaver (Sunday Mirror) and Lloyd Embley (The People) - addressed their journalists about the cuts and changes half an hour ago.
One email to say: "When staff members gathered on the 22nd floor, Richard looked extremely uncomfortable when breaking the news, and even close to tears at one point.
"He kept drinking water to keep his voice steady, and tried to keep it light, saying, 'I'm meant to tell you all this corporate mumbo jumbo.' At the end he finished with, 'I'm sorry, let's just get the paper out, yeah?'"
Senior executives at Trinity Mirror's national division, Mirror Group Newspapers, will now enter into a period of consultation with the affected staff.
Though MGN will hope to carry out some job cuts through a voluntary redundancy programme, it is conceded that there will have to be mandatory redundancies. The terms have yet to be announced, but are said to be "generous."
Richard Wallace, editor of the Daily Mirror, issued a statement in which he said:
Our future is a multimedia one and we need to transform ourselves into an agile media business, ready to grasp the opportunities and challenges of the multimedia world we now inhabit.
Our traditional skills and processes have to change to embrace the emerging platforms and keep our titles in good health. We cannot continue to do what we do in the way that we have always done it.
We simply have to evolve in order to keep our historic and world famous newspapers as relevant and successful as when they first launched over 100 years ago.
But, despite their fame, sales at all three titles have been sliding downwards for years. Over the last six months, the Daily Mirror sold an average of 1,238,076 copies a day, some 8% fewer than in the same period the year before.
The Sunday Mirror has seen its circulation fall by more than 7% over the same period to a total of 1,136,551. And The People has suffered a 9% drop to 553,912. All of these falls are greater than the overall market decline.
In the last year or so, Trinity Mirror has also instituted cuts at many of its regional centres - in Scotland, Wales, Liverpool and Birmingham - after the introduction of ContentWatch. It has also closed several free weeklies during that time.
However, TM has also expanded. In February, it acquired the Guardian Media Group's regional newspapers - in Manchester, Reading and Surrey - in a deal worth £44.8m.
In March, TM reported pre-tax profits of £72.7m for the 12 months to the end of March 2009, a fall of 41%. It was also announced this week that the publisher is to lose its place in the FTSE 250, the elite group of Britain's largest quoted companies.
Its share price stood at 81.5p this afternoon, down from a 12-month high of 197.8p, and giving it a market capitalisation of around £210m.
Mirror national titles to lose 200 jobs as papers move towards digital future
Trinity Mirror is to make 200 editorial staff across its three national titles -the Daily and Sunday Mirror, and The People - redundant.
The job cuts come as the company announces the creation of new multimedia newsrooms linked to the introduction of its web-based content management system, ContentWatch.
Some 30% of the 200 people who will be made redundant are casuals, meaning that 140 full-time posts are to go. Given that the total staffing across the three titles is 554, it means an overall reduction in journalistic jobs of more than 25%.
In an era of widespread job cutbacks by newspaper publishers, it ranks as one of the largest single redundancy programmes by any group. It will involve reporters, writers and photographers losing their jobs as well as sub-editors and some desk editors.
The cuts have been made possible by what the company calls "the successful implementation of ContentWatch", and are said to herald the papers' move towards a digital future. Its statement says:
"The new system and processes enable the production of high quality content across multiple channels while ensuring each title retains its quality, integrity and unique identity. Importantly each title retains its own editor."
Along with the internal production changes, some areas - such as the back-of-the-book "furniture" - will be outsourced, possibly to the Press Association, though no firm agreement has been reached.
News and feature departments will be merged. Football writers will be formed into a pool to write for all three titles. And the print and digital teams will be merged. It also means the end of editionising the Mirror titles in Scotland.
A senior Trinity Mirror (TM) executive referred to it as "a massive step change in how we go about the business of publishing our papers."
There was shock when the three editors - Richard Wallace (Daily Mirror), Tina Weaver (Sunday Mirror) and Lloyd Embley (The People) - addressed their journalists about the cuts and changes half an hour ago.
One email to say: "When staff members gathered on the 22nd floor, Richard looked extremely uncomfortable when breaking the news, and even close to tears at one point.
"He kept drinking water to keep his voice steady, and tried to keep it light, saying, 'I'm meant to tell you all this corporate mumbo jumbo.' At the end he finished with, 'I'm sorry, let's just get the paper out, yeah?'"
Senior executives at Trinity Mirror's national division, Mirror Group Newspapers, will now enter into a period of consultation with the affected staff.
Though MGN will hope to carry out some job cuts through a voluntary redundancy programme, it is conceded that there will have to be mandatory redundancies. The terms have yet to be announced, but are said to be "generous."
Richard Wallace, editor of the Daily Mirror, issued a statement in which he said:
Our future is a multimedia one and we need to transform ourselves into an agile media business, ready to grasp the opportunities and challenges of the multimedia world we now inhabit.
Our traditional skills and processes have to change to embrace the emerging platforms and keep our titles in good health. We cannot continue to do what we do in the way that we have always done it.
We simply have to evolve in order to keep our historic and world famous newspapers as relevant and successful as when they first launched over 100 years ago.
But, despite their fame, sales at all three titles have been sliding downwards for years. Over the last six months, the Daily Mirror sold an average of 1,238,076 copies a day, some 8% fewer than in the same period the year before.
The Sunday Mirror has seen its circulation fall by more than 7% over the same period to a total of 1,136,551. And The People has suffered a 9% drop to 553,912. All of these falls are greater than the overall market decline.
In the last year or so, Trinity Mirror has also instituted cuts at many of its regional centres - in Scotland, Wales, Liverpool and Birmingham - after the introduction of ContentWatch. It has also closed several free weeklies during that time.
However, TM has also expanded. In February, it acquired the Guardian Media Group's regional newspapers - in Manchester, Reading and Surrey - in a deal worth £44.8m.
In March, TM reported pre-tax profits of £72.7m for the 12 months to the end of March 2009, a fall of 41%. It was also announced this week that the publisher is to lose its place in the FTSE 250, the elite group of Britain's largest quoted companies.
Its share price stood at 81.5p this afternoon, down from a 12-month high of 197.8p, and giving it a market capitalisation of around £210m.
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Comments
Because they know that most of the readers of the People would go to the News of the World. If they thought they'd go to the Sunday Mirror I suspect they'd close the People immediately.