NUJ welcomes Sly Bailey quitting Trinity Mirror

NUJ leader Michelle Stanistreet: "Staff demoralised by endless cuts'

NUJ general secretary Michelle Stanistreet has welcomed the news that Trinity Mirror chief executive Sly Bailey is to quit the company.

The union has complained that over the past decade Trinity Mirror has cut journalists' jobs, slashed costs and closed papers while Bailey has picked up a bumper pay packet and benefits.

Stanistreet said: “Sly Bailey has presided over ten years of cuts and decline. She has cut the number of employees by almost a half and slashed budgets in some of the most important newspaper titles in the regions and the Mirror national titles to the bone. While Ms Bailey received well over £12m in pay, bonuses and other benefits since her arrival, her staff have been demoralised by endless rounds of job cuts and newspaper closures. Those who remain have found it increasingly difficult to provide quality news to the communities they serve.”

 

“A recent survey of our reps at Trinity Mirror revealed that staff shortages have meant that court cases and council meetings are not being covered and local papers are unable to fulfil their vital role as a public watchdog, holding local politicians and businesses to account.

“We said in March that Sly Bailey’s continued stewardship was untenable. Her departure will be welcomed by the great majority of her staff who have seen her being rewarded for failure, while they have suffered pay freezes and increased workloads."

She added: "There is a desperate need for a fresh start with imaginative corporate leadership committed to working in partnership with the workforce to build a growing business. The NUJ hopes the group's incoming board will reject the cuts-dominated agenda that has been the characteristic of the Bailey years and show faith in quality journalism.”

Chris Morley, NUJ Northern England organiser, also gave Bailey a less than fond farewell. "In ten long years, Sly Bailey has brought little but demoralisation and misery to Trinity Mirror employees. She has remained impervious to the huge damage done by the ransacking of newsrooms around the group but at the same time maintained the fiction that quality journalism was not a casualty of her lust for cost cuts."

Barry Fitzpatrick, NUJ deputy general secretary, added: “I hope that during her long goodbye, she will reflect on the damage she has done to Trinity Mirror. She should forgo any sort of bonus this year. She should be called to account by shareholders at next week’s AGM and not receive any payment for what is her resignation.”

Birmingham Mail front page scoop packs a punch

Great splash in the Birmingham Mail today about three Aston Villa players involved in a 2.45am Birmingham nightclub brawl just days before one the club’s biggest games of the season - plus a video of the incident online on the paper's website.

The three players - Chris Herd, James Collins and Fabian Delph - have apologised to the fans for their behaviour and the club have fined them with the proceeds going to charity.

Exclusive video of the bust-up, given to the Birmingham Mail, shows Herd – his shirt open down to his chest to reveal a distinctive tattoo near his neck – kicking the club’s glass doors in a confrontation with staff. He is joined by Collins and Delph in what the Mail describes as "the expletive-laden melee."

I'm sure the Mail will sell stacks and get loads of hits online.

Quotes of the Week: From mocking Hodgson to the difference between a good and bad newspaper

Former Sun editor David Yelland tweets on his old paper's mocking of new England manager Roy Hodgson's speech (top): "So little compassion for Roy Hodgson today, bullying language, pointlessly cruel, pointlessly hurtful."

Sly Bailey: "For the past ten years I have had the privilege of being CEO of Trinity Mirror Plc, a fascinating and all consuming role. Newspapers are a business like no other. Now I feel the time has come to hand over to someone else to take up the challenge and for me to seek new challenges and opportunities elsewhere."

Select Committee report on News International and hacking:"If at all relevant times, Rupert Murdoch did not take steps to become fully informed about phone-hacking, he turned a blind eye and exhibited wilful blindess to what was going on in his companies and publications. This culture, we consider, permeated from the top throughout the organisation and speaks volumes about the lack of effective corporate governance at News Corporation and News International. We conclude therefore that Rupert Murdoch is not a fit person  to exercise the stewardship of a major international company".

Select Committe member Tom Watson MP quotes Bob Dylan's 'The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll': "The ladder of law has no top and no bottom."

Select Committee member Louise Mensch: "It will be correctly seen as a partisan report and will have lost a very great deal of its credibility, which is an enormous shame. The issue on which no Conservative member felt they could support the report itself was the line in the middle of the report that said that Mr Rupert Murdoch is not a fit person to run an international company."

News Corp in a statement: "Hard truths have emerged from the Select Committee Report: that there was serious wrongdoing at the News of the World; that our response to the wrongdoing was too slow and too defensive; and that some of our employees misled the Select Committee in 2009. News Corporation regrets, however, that the Select Committee's analysis of the factual record was followed by some commentary that we, and indeed several members of the committee, consider unjustified and highly partisan. These remarks divided the members along party lines.

Former News International chief executive Les Hinton: "I have always been truthful in my dealings with the Committee and its findings are unfounded, unfair and erroneous."

Charles Moore in the Daily Telegraph: "So Leveson is turning out to be an unintended, peacetime version of a war crimes trial. The Murdochs have already been brought before us, in metaphorical handcuffs. Soon will appear, among many others, Mr Blair, Mr Brown, Andy Coulson, whom Mr Cameron hired to handle his press, and, of course, the Prime Minister himself. Because it is a judicial inquiry, the Government dare not concoct a line to take. Each witness is on his own, and so there is a danger of every man for himself. All are “lawyering up”. This is the first week since the election when I have seen the look of fear on ministers’ faces that I remember from the worst days of John Major and of Mr Brown. No one is confident of the ground on which he stands."

London NUJ Freelance Branch: "Some media enterprises seem to regard the serial exploitation of 'workies' as a business model, while outlets that used to pay now seem to work on the basis that online means unpaid."

Nick Cohen on his  Spectator  blog about The Times outing NightJack, the detective blogger Richard Horton: "Educated people in particular think there must be a rational explanation for everything — the Times must have been seeking readers or looking to right a wrong. They forget the power of motiveless malevolence. There is no rational explanation for the Times’ behaviour. It was pure malice. Horton was a successful writer, who was winning awards. But he wasn’t a member of the journalists’ club, so like a vicious boy, who tortures animals, it destroyed him, for no reason at all — just because it could."

Ben Fenton, of the Financial Times, speaking in a discussion on the Leveson Inquiry at the Frontline Club: "The difference between a good newspaper and a bad newspaper is that on a good newspaper the reporter tells the newsdesk what the story is and on a bad newspaper it is the other way around." 

Trinity Mirror announces Sly Bailey to step down

Trinity Mirror has announced that Sly Bailey is to step down as chief executive. She has today given the Board her notice and is expected to leave at the end of the year.

By December she will have served almost 10 years with the company. Trinity  says it will publicly start the search for her successor.

Bailey said in a statement: "For the past ten years I have had the privilege of being CEO of Trinity Mirror Plc, a fascinating and all consuming role. Newspapers are a business like no other.

"Now I feel the time has come to hand over to someone else to take up the challenge and for me to seek new challenges and opportunities elsewhere."

Bailey had come under fire for the size of her pay packet and benefits, with the NUJ campaigning for them to be reduced at a time when editorial staff and budgets were being cut.

The NUJ had claimed Bailey earned a base salary of £750,000 and a short-term cash bonus worth a further 30 per cent of salary, with her pension contributions totalling another £248,000. She also received 503,000 shares worth an extra £396,000 which vest in 2014, and could earn a further 762,000 shares by 2014, the union said.

Michelle Stanistreet, NUJ general secretary, said: “What exactly is Trinity Mirror rewarding Sly Bailey for? Her record speaks for itself. The NUJ has long been calling for the newspaper group to invest in its staff and quality journalism, not lining the pockets of management. This is not the politics of envy; this is saying that if Trinity Mirror is to succeed and survive, then it needs to be spending the money on its staff and titles.”

Hodgson: Sun hasn't always found Wossy funny

 











The Sun turns to Jonathan Ross today to defuse the row about mocking the way new English manager Roy Hodgson speaks on its front page yesterday.

The Sun (left) reports: "Wossy, 51 — who has trouble pronouncing his Rs like new England boss Roy — said yesterday’s Sun front page headline “Bwing On The Euwos” should be taken in the fun spirit intended."

He added: “I can see it’s a joke, everyone can see it’s a joke. Life’s too short."

The Sun couldn't see the joke back in 2008 when Ross was in the middle of the Sachsgate scandal with Russell Brand over their phone messages to actor Andrew Sachs.  It ran front pages (right) with headlines calling for "these sickos" [Ross and Brand] to be sacked.

Press standards: Why not empower the reporters?

Roy Greenslade, Peter Oborne and Ben Fenton at the Frontline Club

It is expected that Lord Justice Leveson will recommend beefed up regulation of the press, underpinned by some form of statutory legislation, when his inquiry into standards is completed.

But could he sweeten the pill by empowering reporters and offering them protection from unscrupulous and bullying newsdesks by recommending that they are offered protection as whistleblowers if they speak out against unethical journalism?

The NUJ has long argued that a "conscience clause" should be inserted in journalists' contracts which would stop them from being unfairly sacked for refusing to do unethical journalism, and raised the matter in its evidence to Leveson.

Ben Fenton, of the Financial Times, speaking in a discussion on the Leveson Inquiry at the Frontline Club last night, claimed: "The difference between a good newspaper and a bad newspaper is that on a good newspaper the reporter tells the newsdesk what the story is and on a bad newspaper it is the other way around."

He said: "I believe that if there was a democratic voice within newspapers, if reporters were allowed in some way to anonymously whistleblow on their editors and newsdesks we would solve a lot of problems we've had in newspaper journalism over the past 50 years."

Guardian media commentator Roy Greenslade, also speaking at the Frontline debate, gave his full backing to the NUJ's idea of a conscience clause based on the union's Code of Conduct, saying it would enable journalists to stand up to their newsdesks.

He said the union had come up with its code in the 1960s and it had taken the newspaper industry until 1991 to draw up the Editors' Code of Practice. "We had the ethics but no-one took it up," Greenslade said.

Thais Portilho-Shrimpton, a journalist and co-ordinator of the Hacked Off campaign, said she would like to see a change in culture and cub reporters joining a national newsroom "without being told to leave their ethics at the door."

As well as Leveson, the discussion centred on the select committee report which concluded this week that Rupert Murdoch was "unfit" to run a major international company.

The Telegraph's chief political correspondent Peter Oborne, who has accused David Cameron of being "in the sewer" because of his News International friends, enthused: "This is the most glorious moment in my adult life."

Political blogger Paul Staines, aka Guido Fawkes, was a tad more cynical claiming that 20 years after Lord Justice Leveson completes his inquiry there will be another judge led investigation into the power of the press.

He said all politicians were afraid of the press and noted: "Since the News of the World closed no MPs have had an affair."

Pic: Jon Slattery

Jeremy Hunt BSkyB bid row is story of the week

The row over Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt and his alleged closeness to News Corp during the BSkyB bid was the top story for the week ending Sunday, April 29, according to journalisted.

Jeremy Hunt faced calls for his resignation in response to correspondence between his office and News Corp regarding the BSkyB bid, generated 409 articles, released after James Murdoch gave evidence at the Leveson Inquiry, 255 articles.

Rupert Murdoch also gave evidence at the Leveson Inquiry, admitting there was a 'cover-up' of practices at the News of the World, but said it was kept from him, 336 articles.

Other top stories were:

The UK was officially declared to be in a double-dip recession, 332 articles.

François Hollande, was predicted to win forthcoming French elections, after winning the first round, 124 articles.

Covered little, according to journalisted, were:

Political turmoil in the Netherlands as PM Mark Rutte tenders his resignation following concerted opposition to austerity cuts, 28 articles.

Growing international pressure on the Ukraine after the former PM, Yulia Tymoshenko, was reportedly beaten by guards while being held in prison, 27 articles.

Jordanian PM Awn Khasawneh resigns after just 6 months, raising questions over the deportation of Abu Qatada, 5 articles.

The PM of Pakistan - Yusuf Raza Gilani - was found guilty of contempt for blocking corruption case against former President Zardari, 3 articles.