Northcliffe's plan to centralise subbing in Nottingham and Hull for its daily newspapers in the East Midlands, threatening 50 jobs (see posting below), has not gone down well.
How do I know this? I looked at comments on the HoldtheFrontPage website, which is run and part owned by Northcliffe. Here are a sample:
Disgusted, of Derby: "I can't believe the Derby Evening Telegraph plans to get rid of its sub-editors by making half of them redundant and shipping those that remain to a centralised subbing pool over the border in Shottingham. Isn't this the same newspaper that ran it's "Hoot" campaign only a few months ago to keep Inland Revenue jobs in Derby instead of sending them down the A52? And now the DET plans to do exactly the same! HYPOCRITES! This would be funny were it not such a farce."
Brenda :I think this is disgusting!
Lis Gibbs: This is an awful decision. I am appalled.
Carmel Harrison: This is appalling. Centralised subbing never works. How can regional titles retain their integrity when management are doing things like this?
All Subbed Out: So in the opinion of Northcliffe, its own motto 'At The Heart Of All Things Local' does not necessarily include having pages subbed by anyone with any decent local knowledge of the area, just someone within 100 miles who might vaguely have heard of some of the places, people and communities being written about. Anyone care to bet against Northcliffe's next step being outsourcing to 'local' production centres in Delhi?
Cadmus: They've obviously been listening to Roy Greenslade
Mr_Osato: How will 'Editors... be fully responsible for their titles to preserve the local identity of the newspapers and websites' when they're not where the papers are being put together. Or maybe the editors are being centralised as well? Whichever way, it's cobblers. What little local flavour newspapers have is slowly being stripped away by the McNewspaper groups, with these 'centres of mediocrity' a prime example
diana peasey: Surely, this immediately undermines the quality of journalism, undermines the credibility of papers by not eliminating spelling mistakes and grammer, nor double checking that a story is balanced and not open to defamation. Or does that not count these days?
Dead ringer: Utter tosh, the whole thing. Again, all the top jobs will be protected, and the poor subs bear the brunt of everything. How is anyone going to move from Lincoln to Hull, for example? And I agree with earlier post. How are eds going to maintain the standards if they are elsewhere? And if they are in Hull, how are they going to know what is going on in their own patch? Deplorable, but sadly inevitable. Mind, I wager there'll still be the same management structure. Can't lose chiefs, can we!!
Interestingly, they seem to have stopped the comment function on the story...
ReplyDeleteAww, come on Jon, how could you not quote Bro Youett?! His contribution in full for those who missed it:
ReplyDeleteChris Youett, amcmi, amimis, ambcs (23/02/2009 15:31)
If UK media management believes that it is "normal" to print local evening papers remotely from the markets they serve, then why isn't everyone else doing it? If they believe what they are doing is correct, then all evening papers should be printed in Carlisle as this is the cheapest site. I would love them to shew where central subbing pools work as they have never done so in the past - and that was when we had lots more highly-trained staff to do it.