Scottish newspapers in conflict
Paul Holleran, head of the National Union of Journalists in Scotland speaks out.
This is true across the world and it is predominantly down to changing technology, particularly the digital development and convergence towards multi-media platforms. It has to be remembered that despite the gloom and doom mongering and regardless of falling share-prices the major newspaper groups are still very profitable. Return on investment is still well above the average for all industries, yet there appears that panic is setting in, affecting the thinking and actions of these major players, as they scramble to make cuts to impress the city markets and attempt to shore up the share-prices.
Trinity Mirror who own The Daily Record & Sunday Mail are looking to introduce a new production system within the next 12 months, which will be more of a multi-media platform. Newsquest have already attempted to do this at The Herald and sister titles Sunday Herald and Evening Times. I say attempted because things are not running as smoothly as they would like with many problems plaguing production staff on a daily and nightly basis.
The process of introducing new technology and the inherent new ways of working is difficult enough and always stressful for those affected. That is made much worse by pushing through job cuts at the same time, which eat into the bone of staffing levels and undermine the collective ability of editorial teams to produce a daily paper within deadline.
Of course that is without even referring to the quality question. There are two elements of quality affected. One is the quality of life of journalists taking on more responsibilities, increased flexibility and new skills as well as picking up workloads from redundant colleagues.
The other is the quality of the product, which suffers and in some cases suffers badly. It goes without saying that the knock-on effect is diminishing revenues as circulation and advertising falls in line with the drop in quality. This scenario affects journalists, who want to be associated with a quality paper and as their own stress rises they become more disillusioned by the fall in quality of their product.
That is why NUJ members are saying enough is enough. The Record & Sunday Mail chapel is balloting for industrial action next week with a large vote in favour expected as vacancies are not filled and expenses cut to meet the number-crunching. Johnston Press chapels across the country are calling for industrial action against job cuts and title closures and the Herald & Times chapels have called on their management to deal with the high stress levels they are facing before introducing phase two of their new technology.
An old Chinese curse says “May you live in interesting times.” That is certainly the case in the newspaper industry for some time to come.
Paul Holleran, head of the National Union of Journalists in Scotland