Saturday 29 November 2008

Are newspapers on the list to be saved from bankruptcy Mr. Mandelson?

Patrick Wintour reveals in The Guardian today that Peter Mandelson is drawing up plans to choose which businesses and industries are important enough to be saved in the event of their going bankrupt as the recession bites.
Newspaper journalists and publishers must be asking: "Are we on the list?" - as the industry faces wide scale editorial redundancies, with more than 100 announced last Thursday. In what is billed as "his first newspaper interview since returning to the cabinet", the business secretary told Wintour he planned a more interventionist policy for industry. Intriguingly, it was Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger who first raised the possibility of Government intervention being required to save regional newspapers which are facing unprecedented turbulence in the economic downturn and competition for ad revenues and readers from the internet.
In London today the NUJ is holding a crisis jobs summit of reps from regional newspaper groups across the country. The union wants to draw up a co-ordinated response to editorial cuts it claims will seriously damage the quality of journalism in regional newspapers.

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