Newsquest hack vents after payday change

Posted by Martin Stabe on 13 March 2006 at 11:27
Tags: Journalism, Newsquest, Northcliffe, Regionals

At least one current Newsquest staffer is unimpressed by his employers’ decision to change payday without consultation. “Stevie D” from Blackpool writes:

On Friday, with no warning, I and my dwindling band of colleagues were called to an ‘urgent’ announcement at the head office of our local Newsquest Ffiefdom. Several people, myself inclued, were told that their positions were to dissapear. We don’t even get the pay-off that comes with redundancy - we just get another job, in another town, more than likely on a lower wage.

Stevie isn’t a big fan of regional newspapers generally, it seems:

You’ve probably never heard of Johnston Press, Newsquest, Trinity-Mirror or Northcliffe but the chances are that one of these massive companies produces at least one newspaper in your home town

It’s probably a pretty scraggy effort. A few stories about cats, perhaps the scantest and most uncritical look at what the people you voted in to run your local council are up to. A sports page, probably something grim about crime on the front.

It will make a big song and dance about its ‘community role’ but when you phone up asking for a photographer to cover an important community event you’ll probably discover that he the one snapper left is shared with two or three other publications. Ask for a reporter and you’ll discover there is only one and they are chained to their desk writing an advertising supplement to raise a little more revenue. Ask to speak to the editor and you’ll probably discover they are based 30 miles away and also handle four other newspapers.

Stevie says journalists axed from Northcliffe papers shown that regional newspaper journalists can now start up their own titles fairly easily, pointing to the Cheltenham-based Compact and the Clifton Chronicle. Stevie clearly doesn’t plan to stick around very long himself: He’s busy writing up a business plan.