As the profits pile in from MEN Media, why indeed is Trinity Mirror cutting yet more jobs?

Posted by Dominic Ponsford on 2 August 2010 at 10:13
Tags: Guardian Media Group, Journalism, Journalists, National Newspapers, Trinity Mirror, regional newspapers

Trinity Mirror paid Guardian Media Group £7.4m for its regional newspapers business on 28 March. As of 4 July Trinity had already made £2.7m profit on turnover of £18.2m out of the Manchester Evening News and some 33 weekly titles. By the end of the financial year Trinity Mirror will probably have made the entire purchase price back.

No wonder National Union of Journalists members at the Manchester Evening News are ‘baffled’ that Trinity Mirror is planning to make ten of them redundant.
Especially considering the fact that when Trinity Mirror bought the MEN it promised that there was “no redundancy programme planned”.

In Trinity’s interim results it notes that the purchase of GMG Regional Media has been “highly successful” delivering “strong revenue and profit performance”.
If anything the company seems pleasantly surprised by how well the new division has done. So why the need for the unplanned-for redundancy programme?

Trinity is already saving a shed-load of money by moving MEN Media staff from their smart city-centre offices in Manchester to vacant space in a printworks in Chadderton, Oldham, which it already owns. Just last year some 78 editorial jobs were cut at MEN Media as it closed all the weekly newspaper offices.

It does seem short-sighted to make a new wave cutbacks just as the business is getting on its feet again, by further integrating the weekly and daily newspaper editorial teams.

Here’s what the MEN Media NUJ chapel said on Friday:

“Today’s  statement  showing encouraging interim results from Trinity Mirror and including an acknowledgement of the great financial contribution already  being made by the recently-acquired MEN Media, leaves us  even more baffled and angry that we are currently in the process of  shedding up to 10 more journalists’ jobs on top of the 78 axed last year.

“Over the past few years, journalists at the  Manchester Evening News and weekly newspapers  have seen that when business is good, management cuts our jobs, when business is bad, management cuts our jobs and then business is improving, management cuts our jobs. Different management, same philosophy.”

The reason for the latest cutbacks lies, I suspect, with the need to hit group-wide cost reduction targets, of £25m for the year to help pay down overall debt which currently stands at £308.4m.

Trinity Mirror is to be congratulated for turning  the financial performance around so quickly, and to a certain extent can’t be blamed for the economic realities of being a big Plc which has funded what it sees as necessary expansion through taking on debt.

But given GMG and the Scott Trust’s long association with Manchester, and its constitutional commitment to supporting journalism, might it have sought an exit from its regionals business which would have better served its old home-town?

There must have been any number of of wealthy individuals, or companies, with strong local links to Manchester who would have been delighted with the sort of return Trinity Mirror is now enjoying from its new regionals business, been proud to own such an esteemed set of media titles and not felt the same pressure to cut costs.

A devastating critique of Trinity Mirror’s stewardship of Media Wales

Posted by Dominic Ponsford on 20 July 2010 at 15:28
Tags: Trinity Mirror, regional newspapers

Research fellow at Cardiff University Andy Williams has produced a devastating critique of Trinity Mirror’s management of its Welsh newspaper titles.

Devastatingly brilliant of you’re a shareholder…but just devastating if you’re a journalist.

Profits at the division, which includes the Western Mail and North Wales Daily Post, have soared over the last decade to £18.9m on turnover of £52m in 2008, Williams reports.

At the same time costs have been cut and cut with the result that 300 out of 700 editorial jobs have gone over the course of a decade.

Williams notes:

“Media Wales alone has experienced five rounds of job cuts since 2003, delayed- and non-replacement of staff who leave is endemic, and journalists’ pay is extremely low.”

He writes:

“Reporters are finding it increasingly hard to do basic tasks such as get out on their ‘patch’, make themselves known, cultivate contacts, and gather the news. Instead they are desk-bound, passive, and reliant on resource-rich news sources with efficient public relations teams willing to feed them press releases which can easily be “re-nosed” into shallow and inoffensive news stories.”

And he concludes:

“…as long as proprietors value the pocketbooks of shareholders above the quality of the news and the welfare of audiences and staff, the Welsh public sphere is likely to be further diminished.”

If you look at the performance of independently owned newspapers like the Press and Journal in Aberdeen, and the Express and Star in Wolverhampton, and compare them to titles owned by the likes of Trinity Mirror and Johnston Press – it’s difficult not to conclude that the shareholder model of capitalism is deeply flawed when it comes to regional press ownership.

Private owners would rather take 10 per cent a year for 30 years, reinvesting in the long-term health of the business. Trinity Mirror is, it appears, more interested in short-term profits.

Looking at chief executive Sly Bailey’s annual bonus – it was £671,000 last year – , she only has to hit her profit targets for a few years to retire a rich lady.

UPDATE: 9am, 21 July, Western Mail editor Alan Edmunds has issued a strongly worded response to the Willams study.

He said: “We will be taking this up in very strong terms with Cardiff University to tell them that, in our view, this is another example from them of one-eyed, inadequately-researched hyperbole full of ill-informed statements, old chestnuts, tired cliches and 1970s rhetoric.

“It is almost identical in tone and line to an equally out-of-touch and quaint view published by the same research department a few years ago and shows an astonishing lack of understanding of how we have had to change and modernise to meet the fast-evolving demands of readers and advertisers.”

More on this on the main news section of www.pressgazette.co.uk

Charity begins in the boardroom

Posted by Press Gazette on 20 August 2007 at 15:48
Tags: Guardian Media Group, Northern & Shell, Pearson, Trinity Mirror

For all the challenges currently facing the media – the work of journalists still underpins an industry which is worth billions of pounds every year.

In the regional press, profit margins of 20 to 30 per cent are still the norm, as is the case for many B2B publishers.

National newspapers typically earn less cash for their owners, but the likes of Express Newspapers has delivered up to £1m a week to its owner in recent years.

The UK's biggest newspaper publisher, Trinity Mirror, made an operating profit of £207m in 2006 on turnover of £1,032m and Guardian Media Group has just announced full-year profits of £105.2m on turnover of £700.3m.

In 2006 Trinity Mirror made charitable donations of £68,000. Why, despite being approached by the Journalists' Charity, was none earmarked for its care home? The GMG annual report reveals that it made £503,731 of charitable donations in 2006 – yet again, despite being approached, it made no donation to the Journalists' Charity. As Press Gazette went to print last week, GMG told us it would be making a donation. Bravo.

News organisations expect a lot from their staff – and in the main, journalists deliver admirably. They work long hours above and beyond their contracts – sometimes to the extent that they make themselves ill – often because they are motivated by helping others. They know what they write matters because it can make a difference to people's lives.

The Journalists' Charity provides financial aid for thousands of journalists no longer able to help themselves – and cares full-time for many, and their dependents, through its fabulous new nursing home. But the charity's work could be undermined if cash is not found to cover a £3m shortfall in the cost of building Pickering House.

Hopefully it has only been an oversight that so many of the big news organisations have yet to fulfil their responsibilities.

All news organisations should be more open

Posted by Press Gazette on 3 May 2007 at 08:00
Tags: BBC, Daily Mail, Freedom of Information, John Witherow, Paul Dacre, Richard Wallace, Sly Bailey, Trinity Mirror

Last week’s High Court judgment upholding the BBC’s limited derogation from the Freedom of Information Act highlights a hypocrisy of British public life.

News organisations – although highly concerned with openness in others – can be among our most opaque public institutions.

Solicitor Steve Sugar challenged the BBC under the FoI Act to release the Balen Report – assessing whether its coverage of the Middle East was biased.

But the corporation successfully argued that the report was covered by a clause in the Act which exempts the BBC from disclosing information about its journalism.

Legal nitpicking aside, the BBC is an enormously powerful public-funded organisation and should release this report, irrespective of the Act. If certain paragraphs need to be omitted to save the confidentiality of individuals, so be it.

The BBC could argue that subjecting its journalism to FoI would place it an unfair disadvantage compared to commercial players. But perhaps there is a case for subjecting all news organisations to some form of FoI.

Without journalism, public life would have almost no accountability, democracy would not work and the police and judiciary would operate behind a cloak of darkness. But journalistic organisations have none of the same obligations towards openness that public institutions now have under FoI.

The likes of Lord Rothermere, Paul Dacre, Rebekah Wade, Richard Wallace, Sly Bailey and John Witherow – to name a few offenders – almost never open themselves to the scrutiny of a journalistic interview, despite being public figures wielding huge power. If any of them reading this has a change of heart, Press Gazette is happy to supply questions.

Rewards and incentives must not just be at the top

Posted by Press Gazette on 5 April 2007 at 10:00
Tags: Johnston Press, Journalists, Press Gazette Leaders, Sly Bailey, Tim Bowdler, Trinity Mirror

Journalism is not the best paid profession. But it can still be an extremely lucrative business to be in, as the newly revealed salaries of Tim Bowdler and Sly Bailey show.

The Johnston Press annual report revealed last week that pay for chief executive Bowdler rose from £622,000 to £800,000 in 2006. And the Trinity Mirror results this week revealed that pay for chief executive Bailey had increased 48 per cent to £1.45 million.

While neither are journalists, it is surely a positive sign for the industry that the pickings at the top are so rich. Both executives lead predominately regional newspaper-based businesses which are grappling with unprecedented challenges. While profits are down, they have nonetheless been rewarded for their ability to grapple with the new media challenge while at the same time cutting costs.

It is a great shame that the board of directors of these two publishing giants don’t apply the same logic when assessing the annual remuneration packages for the journalists — without whose blood, sweat and tears neither business would exist.

But far from the 48 per cent pay rise enjoyed by Bailey, most journalists will be lucky if their annual pay rise keeps pace with inflation, despite the fact that they are expected to work harder than ever — producing the same papers with fewer resources while at the same time beefing up multi-media output.

Newspaper owners trade on the fact that journalists are often driven more by professional pride and hunger to tell the story than by money.

But if they are going to compete with ever-more internet start-ups — and persuade their own staff not to start online competitors themselves — they need to encourage grassroots innovation from the people who know their businesses best.

And that means incentivising journalists rather than just paying them the minimum amount that the market will bear.