Daily Mail group cuts 1,000 jobs

The Daily Mail and General Trust (DMGT) is to cut 1,000 jobs as the advertising slump continues to hurt newspapers.

THE job cuts at its regional arm Northcliffe Media are more than double what it estimated last November, the media company said.
Northcliffe Media publishes 113 papers in England and Wales, selling 4.1 million copies a week.
It said it had a "difficult quarter" so far and expects a "substantial fall" in profits in the first half of 2009.
The "vast majority" of the job cuts have already taken place or are currently under consultation, said a company spokesman.
Northcliffe Media's newspapers include the Leicester Mercury, Hull Daily Mail and the Bristol Evening Post.

Newspapers battered
The company said in its trading update that further costs were being cut in all departments at its newspaper division, which includes the Daily Mail and free newssheet the Metro.
The DMGT said the job cuts would result in exceptional operating costs of about £20m in the group's half year results to 29 March, to be announced in May.
The company said it expected advertising revenue at its newspapers during the three months to March to drop by an underlying 24%, and to fall at Northcliffe Media as a whole by 37%.
Shares in DMGT rose 2% to 238.5 pence.
DMGT sold the London Evening Standard newspaper in January to Russian billionaire Alexander Lebedev for the sum of £1.
The recession has hit advertisers and newspapers hard, with local publishers being especially affected.

National impact
Local newspaper group Archant, which owns the Eastern Daily Press and Evening News, said this month it is planning to cut 34 jobs in Norfolk.
And up to a quarter of 276 editorial staff at the Glasgow-based Daily Record and Sunday Mail newspapers are to lose their jobs under plans to merge their newsrooms.
Observer Standard Newspapers in Worcestershire, with a staff of 150, went into administration earlier this month.
The government has said that preserving the future of local news was a priority. Culture minister Barbara Follett said the government would "work tirelessly to secure news for local communities".
National newspapers have also been hurt badly, with the Independent cutting back on staff and moving its staff to the Daily Mail's offices in Kensington, west London.
The Financial Times last week told staff that it planned to streamline its editing staff and cut back from three editions per day to two, and the Daily Express and Sunday Express plan to cut staff as well this year.
The phenomenon is not restricted to the UK.

US papers
There is much talk of a crisis in the US newspaper industry as many cities see their households titles in trouble.
The 146-year-old Seattle Post-Intelligencer this month became the first US paper to stop a print edition and go online only, with an editorial team of 20 as compared to 150 previously.
Last month the San Francisco Chronicle said the paper could be sold or closed down if it could not meet cost-cutting targets.

The Tribune Company, which owns the Chicago Tribune, the Los Angeles Times, the Baltimore Sun and many other titles, filed for bankruptcy in December.

Source: BBC News

Trinity Mirror to cut 70 jobs at Glasgow newspapers

Almost a third of editorial staff face redundancy at Daily Record and Sunday Mail

TRINITY Mirror is cutting up to 70 journalists, almost a third of editorial staff, from its Glasgow-based Scottish newspapers, including the Daily Record and Sunday Mail, as part of a radical shakeup.
Editorial operations for Trinity Mirror's Glasgow papers are to be integrated, with the Daily Record editor, Bruce Waddell, appointed to the newly created role of editor-in-chief of the two flagship titles to oversee the adoption of a new web-based content management system, ContentWatch.
Allan Rennie, the Sunday Mail editor, has been moved to a new role of editorial development director of Trinity Mirror's national titles, including the Daily Mirror and the People, as well as Scottish papers.
According to Trinity Mirror, initial changes involve the reorganisation of the senior editorial team, which also includes weekly titles the Glaswegian and Business7, and the Record PM afternoon freesheet.
It is understood Trinity Mirror will seek up to 60 voluntary redundancies from across all editorial departments in Glasgow, to join 10 staff who have already left, as it develops a single editorial production operation.
It is not clear how the plans will affect the news and picture desks and other editorial departments of individual titles.
The publisher, which broke the news to 240 editorial staff at lunchtime today, said it has entered a 30-day consultation period with those likely to be affected.
"It was a pretty open secret that restructuring along these lines was in the offing," said a Daily Record source. "Staff are surprised by the scale of the job losses. We knew something was in the offing – that cuts were coming – but we were taken aback."
According to Trinity Mirror, the changes will see a "multimillion-pound investment" in new technology in its Glasgow base to enable production of high-quality content across multiple print and online publications, for which remaining staff will undergo multimedia training.
"These are extraordinary days in our industry. No business, including ours, has escaped the economic downturn," said Mark Hollinshead, managing director of Trinity Mirror's national division.
"This reorganisation plus the investment in technology and retraining of staff will better position us for the future in what will be a dramatically different media economy and commercial environment."
Glasgow will become the second Trinity Mirror publishing centre, after the company's regional operation in Birmingham, to introduce the ContentWatch editorial system.
In August, Trinity Mirror started the process of overhauling its large regional publishing operations when it announced a radical revamp of its Midlands operation.
It created two large new integrated multimedia newsrooms in Birmingham and Coventry, providing editorial for five titles, including the Birmingham Post and the Coventry Telegraph, at a cost of 65 editorial jobs.
Similar restructures at Trinity's regional operations across the North of England in November cost a total of 106 jobs.
Centralisation of production and photographic work of more than 20 Trinity weekly newspapers across London, the south-east and the home counties, led to about 16 editorial jobs being cut last month.
The move follows the pre-Christmas announcement by Newsquest subsidiary the Herald & Times Group, also based in Glasgow, of a similar editorial reorganisation expected to cost up to 40 jobs.
"We are shocked at the scale of the proposals but it looks like the company do appear to be keen to engage with us over the voluntary redundancies," said Paul Holleran, the NUJ's Scottish organiser.
"But it's quite a young workforce. It's not like the Herald, which is a bit older and where they were able to find all necessary redundancies. It might be harder to get them [at the Record]."

Source: Guardian.co.uk