Severe Cutbacks at the MEN
Article published: Thursday, August 13th 2009
When it was announced in March that 150 staff at the Manchester Evening News Group, including 78 journalists, would lose their jobs, staff and unions reacted with shock and anger.
The MEN is the UK’s biggest regional newspaper, operating 22 titles across Greater Manchester, stretching from Cheshire (Wilmslow and Stockport) and Derbyshire (Glossop) to Accrington and Rossendale in Lancashire.
The Guardian Media Group, owned by the Scott Trust, of which the Manchester Evening News group is a part, announced the closure of all regional offices, with their remaining staff relocated to the MEN offices just off Deansgate. Regional weeklies will be written and designed by a pool of journalists.
The MEN and Manchester branch of the National Union of Journalists, understandably upset, took out a full page advert in the Guardian to protest the cuts, and negotiated to reduce the redundancies, although 28 journalists will still go at the MEN and 36 took voluntary redundancy at the weeklies.
This is a situation that’s being mirrored across the country. The National Newspaper Society reported that last year 60 out of 1,300 regional newspapers closed, and those that remain are scaling back staff.
Where do you to go find your news? The internet? Television? Some 40 million adults in the UK still read a daily or weekly newspaper, so it seems that the local rag is often the first place where many of us find out about the issues that affect us.
Newspapers perform a vital function in society, scrutinising the council, holding the police and NHS to account and making sure that justice is seen to be done through coverage of court cases.
The local paper can act as a unifying force in a community, from publishing sport results, births, marriages, deaths and classified ads, to running campaigns – for, example, the Manchester Evening News’ campaign to return money to the Christie Hospital invested in a collapsed Icelandic bank.
Local MPs and councillors are also worried about the loss of a vital part of the democratic process. There are calls for the government to intervene, and former Culture Secretary Andy Burnham promised a review of what can be done to help.
In a Parliamentary debate on the future of regional news, Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for ‘Culture, Media and Sport’ Barbara Follett said newspapers are “at the heart of the democratic process” and “the soul of local communities”.
In the same debate, Ann Coffey, Labour MP for Stockport, said the success of local newspapers lies in being “written by journalists who are constantly out and about and who know the local area and its people well.” She added: “Local newspapers also provide a forum for individuals and organisations to speak to each other.”
This is echoed by the National Union of Journalists. Jenny Lennox of the Manchester branch, said: “We believe that you can’t do good quality local journalism unless it’s physically based in the area in which it serves. With the staff cuts, it will also be harder for journalists covering somewhere like Accretion or Macclesfield to get out of the Manchester office and travel to those areas.”
Part of the problem, ironically, is that newspapers are increasingly coming under threat from publications produced by local government, which are in direct competition with local newspapers. In addition, the public often expects to receive its news for free, whether through web journalism or in freesheets.
Traditionally, newspapers have been funded by advertising, yet this has been hit doubly hard by the recession and a shift towards online advertising.
Natalie Bradbury
More: News, Unions and workplace
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[…] in the region not under Trinity’s control. The move could also see the MEN, which itself had cut staff and closed regional offices last year, be moved out of the centre of Manchester to Trinity’s offices in Oldham with further […]
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