Paper cuts slice into Courier's newsroom operations
A NUMBER of journalists at the Courier and Weekly News face an uncertain future in major structural changes announced last Friday.
They are among those whose jobs will be most at risk under plans by the Johnston Press group's Midlands division to establish three regional sub-editing and editorial page production centres in Northampton, Milton Keynes and Peterborough.
Staff at dozens of local newspapers – weeklies and three dailies – will be affected across an area covering Warwickshire to East Anglia and Lincolnshire to the Home Counties.
It is estimated nearly 50 jobs will be lost in total. A number of editorial management roles are to be redefined.
All newsrooms are expected to retain locally-based reporting staff and heads of content.
Midlands Division managing director Nick Mills said: "Our objective is always to ensure that our newspapers and websites remain at the heart of their communities.
"The proposed changes will ensure the efficient continued delivery of high quality, local content across our many news delivery channels."
A staff consultation process has begun and this is scheduled to be concluded by March 6.
A Johnston Press statement said: "In the event that the proposals go ahead, we anticipate there will be up to 49 potential redundancies which we will endeavour to minimise through voluntary severance and redeployment."
Last Friday's announcement follows similar restructuring moves by other regional newspaper publishing companies as the declining economy continues to adversely impact on advertising revenues.
In an earlier round of re-organisation last year some photographic and editorial department administration roles were lost at the Courier and Weekly News and at sister titles in Banbury, Rugby, Daventry, Buckingham, Aylesbury and Hemel Hempstead.
Advertising departments at these offices are also being re-structured and a number of jobs are threatened by plans to centralise classified and tele-sales roles.
In December Johnston Press announced a group-wide pay freeze for 2009.
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Tuesday 22 May 2012
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