Crisis costing '140 news media jobs a week'

At last someone has attempted to collate the number of news media jobs going in in the current economic crisis. Peter Kirwan, who writes a blog on financial matters for Press Gazette, has done the sums and claims that media jobs are being slashed at the rate of 140 a week - and that figure is rising. He estimates that 2,709 posts have been axed since the crisis began in July. You can read Peter's conclusions here. It is notoriously difficult to establish the exact number of redundancies. Some companies could be cutting jobs and not replacing staff without having to make any formal announcement. So well done Peter for having a try.
NUJ general secretary Jeremy Dear in his blog today welcomes the Press Gazette story but says of the estimate of job cuts: "That seriously underplays the problem which is in large part caused by non-replacement of staff. The true picture in some newsrooms is grim. For example yesterday I spoke to a journalist at a daily regional paper who was the only reporter there that day. The reporting staff as a whole has dropped by half. It's a familiar story for those working in local newspapers. But it is also now becoming more familiar to those working across the media ."
Emap announced 40 redundancies today.