50 journalists gather to lambast Newsquest cuts
The Drum reports from last night's NUJ meeting in Glasgow where passions ran high as journalists outlined their disgust at the publishing group's actions.
Concerned members of the Scottish media met at the STUC building in Glasgow's West End to hear James Doherty, National President of the NUJ, outline the Union's disgust at the way journalists and photographers are being treated not only by Newsquest, but by all newspaper publishing groups in Scotland.
Doherty kicked off the debate by outlining the many job cuts that have been experienced to date in the Scottish press industry, concluding that "the voracious appetite for excessive profits is the biggest threat to regional newspapers not just in Scotland, but across the UK."
Also, speaking at the meeting was SNP MSP Sandra White, who is supporting journalists across Scotland and lobbying the Scottish Parliament and Health & Safety regulators to take action to protect the journalists affected, who are coming under intense levels of stress and anguish as their jobs are slowly but surely eroded.
Alan Miller, who heads up the recently formed Scottish Commission for Human Rights, also spoke at the meeting to outline the vital importance of journalists and a strong free press to address the many human rights breaches going on in the world and threw the Commission's full support behind the journalists under threat.
Other union members from UNISON, UNITE, STUC and also the Stop The War Coalition were also in attendance to lend their support to under fire journalists, in the knowledge that if they allow journalistic standards to be continually dumbed down that their voices and causes will also fail to reach a mass audience.
The NUJ's Scottish organiser Paul Holleran was also there to outline the NUJ's immediate concerns over the treatment of its members and also what the Union is doing to try to address the many concerns of its members, which includes a major desire by media owners such as Newsquest to cut paid journalists in favour of gathering user generated content from readers and the general public.
Holleran even read aloud from Newsquest's mandate that increasing user generated content is a key policy in the future.
Of Newsquest in Glasgow Holleran said: "People are literally queuing up to get out the doors, but Newsquest are now begging people to take themselves off the voluntary redundancy list because they know that they will not be able to get their newspapers out without the help of certain people."
According to one insider at the Herald, 11 of 15 subs are keen to leave the newspaper.Another highly respected journalist taking redundancy from the Herald outlined his disgust at how he and colleagues are being treated by Newsquest bosses. The journalist has been with the Herald for more than 35 years, during which time he has been injured twice in the line of his duty while covering conflicts.
Speaking emotionally at the meeting the journalist said: "Newsquest will rip the journalistic heart out of the Herald, but after the way I have been treated even if they doubled my salary I would not go back. After 30-plus years working for a newspaper that I love and after being injured twice for them I would not break a follicle of hair on my head for that newspaper now. After so many years years I do not want to be there to see the Herald's death throes. Newsquest should not be allowed to run any British newspapers."
Videos of the presentations by James Doherty, Sandra White, Alan Miller and Paul Holleran will be available to view on The Drum's website on Monday.