Thursday 27 November 2008

Black day in British newspaper history

Barring a newspaper closing down, today must rank as one of the bleakest in the history of the British Press with job cuts being announced across the country. Just look at the headlines today on Media Guardian, Press Gazette and Hold The Front Page. '50 jobs to go at Telegraph titles,' 'Trinity Mirror to cut 78 jobs in north-west restructure,' 'Savage cuts at Times's London bureau,' 'Newsquest axes editors and publishers', 'CN Group cuts up to 30 jobs' . It is the scale of the cuts that is so frightening: 10 per cent of journalists at the Telegraph and 25 per cent at Trinity Mirror in Liverpool. And no doubt there is more to come, both on national and regional newspapers. An announcement is expected tomorrow about redundancies at the Newsquest Bradford centre. It is relentless. I covered the newspaper industry for 23 years at Press Gazette and in all that time I don't remember anything remotely as bad as this.

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