Redundancies at Munster Express

MitchKoobski

Damien Tiernan just let word there on twitter.

http://twitter.com/#!/damienrte/status/105731154124083201

Very sad day for Munster Express newspaper, 11 redundancies, nearly half workforce, printing press & production due to go, outsourcing.

http://twitter.com/#!/damienrte/status/105731509528432640

Editor Kieran Walsh addressed staff earlier this evening, shock with everybody, some people with 35 years experience.

Sure we had our criticisms at times, but nothing good comes from jobs going no matter where it is.

batm!ke

A sign of things to come for the News & Star or will their sales rise? Most people I know bought both papers anyway.

ziedth

Exactly,

I don't buy the paper for reasons the majority of us know and that I won't get into but I'd never want to see this happen to anywhere. very sad news.

batm!ke

Wonder where the "outsourcing" will go?

Sully

Wonder what that will mean for the printing of the WIT paper, they generally do it..

seanybiker

Thats a balls. I only ever read the court pages to see who I know but its bad that people are loosing jobs.

ziedth

I'm not in printing or anything like that but surely for the relatively small amount of papers they print per week and they own their own equipment that it would be cheaper to print it yourself?

deise48

ziedth wrote: »

Exactly,

I don't buy the paper for reasons the majority of us know and that I won't get into but I'd never want to see this happen to anywhere. very sad news.

i dont know?

Sully

ziedth wrote: »

I'm not in printing or anything like that but surely for the relatively small amount of papers they print per week and they own their own equipment that it would be cheaper to print it yourself?

Printing equipment is expensive to run and maintain. Ink, Paper etc. Afaik they did other college papers also, and offered good value. Shame if its impacted

jmcc

Sully wrote: »

Printing equipment is expensive to run and maintain. Ink, Paper etc. Afaik they did other college papers also, and offered good value. Shame if its impacted

Don't they have the intarweb in WIT yet?

Sad to see those jobs lost though. It was probably hard for the Muster Express to compete with Waterford Today.

Regards...jmcc

SillyMcCarthy

It is a paper that never moved with the times.
I always found it a mish mash of stories & photographs.
Still though, it's sad to see it come to this!

MitchKoobski

Sully wrote: »

Wonder what that will mean for the printing of the WIT paper, they generally do it..

I think we might be going online only for a bit...

MacGyver

If you do go online just use pdf's dont do any of that fancy page turning website stuff. you would get a larger readership and no printing costs.

Daysha

Unfortunately this was only a matter of time. There's no market in the city for 3 local papers but hopefully they'll hang in there as long as they can.

The News & Star will be fine though. If anything locals are the safest of all print media and if the N&S get an increase in readership because of this then I'd hope they take on some of the old Munster staff in the future.

MitchKoobski

I never really liked the main section (always seemed to be 1/3 obituaries and jobs), but always read the Sport and Entertainment part.

They only celebrated their 150th Anniversary a while back.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MAhfyjHfdp0

If anyone can find me the munster express ad from Waterford@8 gets a cookie.

iseegirls

They have moved to one edition of the paper over the past few months, so there was no late edition on Friday. So I'd say that impacted on them meaning less work to do.

I work in a newsagent and I thought the sales for the one and only edition would rise but hasn't at all. In fact News and Star outsells it, but that may vary now in different areas in Waterford.

mike65

I wonder how much revenue they raise through classifieds these days, its been an age since I bought a copy but I'll assume they carry but a fraction of the ads for cars, tellies etc as compared to a decade ago. Add in the general scaling back of advertising spend combined with possibly reduced column inch rates.

hardybuck

Any word on where the work is being outsourced to?

I've long felt that we've far too many papers in the county, none of them covering news and sport to anywhere like the depth or quality of say The Kerryman or perhaps the old Cork Examiner. Would we be better off with one good quality product rather than four or five average ones?

merlante

hardybuck wrote: »

Any word on where the work is being outsourced to?

I've long felt that we've far too many papers in the county, none of them covering news and sport to anywhere like the depth or quality of say The Kerryman or perhaps the old Cork Examiner. Would we be better off with one good quality product rather than four or five average ones?

The Irish Times have a modern printing facility in City West in Dublin that was always intended to look for outsourced business, so that seems like an obvious candidate.

It's not simply a case of overall quality, it's also a case of getting content tailored to your market. People will take a hit in quality for local, tailored content, which you will not get from the Irish Times, Independent, etc. Every publication that was ever produced had a bias or perspective of some description that all news was filtered through. If you want a Waterford viewpoint then you need an organ of the media that will present facts/commentary from that viewpoint. I would also see it as a negative development if we only ended up a few papers in Ireland because then you only have a few viewpoints in Ireland. It's not clear that social media -- as it currently stands -- can address this issue either.

hardybuck

Newspress in Kells are apparently a big player in that market also.

I wasn't comparing the Munster to national papers like the Irish Times - I was comparing them to local papers which cover a whole county. The Evening Echo in Cork is another example - and they manage to pump that out daily!

Obviously Waterford is a small county, we don't have the ability to sustain four-five independant newspapers of a decent quality. These makes the situation worse as people stop buying them as lately there is almost nothing to read in them.

One good quality paper for Waterford county is all we need realistically rather than a choice of mediocre efforts.

Bards

merlante wrote: »

The Irish Times have a modern printing facility in City West in Dublin that was always intended to look for outsourced business, so that seems like an obvious candidate..

I presume you mean http://maps.google.com/?ll=53.292002,-6.433954&spn=0.000051,0.077162&z=14&vpsrc=6&layer=c&cbll=53.291967,-6.434344&panoid=ARRfTWk__279PTMD_ir5gQ&cbp=12,192.36,,0,-1.36

I thought it belonged to Independent News & Media?

Cabaal

Bards wrote: »

I thought it belonged to Independent News & Media?

It does, atleast on google maps thats what the sign outside the building says

Godsentme

Complete bollux of a "Newspaper". As is WLR as a radio station. But we read it and listen to it because it's local and maybe we might read or hear a bit of gossip on them.

Tough luck though on the guys who are going. But (I assume) most of them will be near retirement age anyway and a redundancy lump sum will be a better send off than a watch.:p

homolumo

Godsentme wrote: »

Tough luck though on the guys who are going. But (I assume) most of them will be near retirement age anyway and a redundancy lump sum will be a better send off than a watch.:p

Don't think too many are near retirement.

merlante

Bards wrote: »

I presume you mean http://maps.google.com/?ll=53.292002,-6.433954&spn=0.000051,0.077162&z=14&vpsrc=6&layer=c&cbll=53.291967,-6.434344&panoid=ARRfTWk__279PTMD_ir5gQ&cbp=12,192.36,,0,-1.36

I thought it belonged to Independent News & Media?

Never seen it but, this comes up on google maps: http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?ie=UTF8&oe=UTF8&msa=0&msid=108436176017935778245.00046fca454413374919c

blueboy123

Very sad news. Always liked the sports part, covered all local sports pretty well, never thought there was enough news stuff in it though!

jmcc

blueboy123 wrote: »

Very sad news. Always liked the sports part, covered all local sports pretty well, never thought there was enough news stuff in it though!

The paper itself is continuing. It is just the print side of things that is being outsourced according to the report.

Regards...jmcc

Silverado

I’m glad someone pointed out that it’s not gone, it’s just having to rationalise its costs.

I think that a local paper which has been in existence for 150 years should be supported by all of us. If we allow the newer forms of news media such as Twitter and Facebook take over from this type of established reporting then we are embarking on a slippery slope. These are usually uncorroborated and filled with hearsay and gossip. I prefer to live in the real world of fact not fantasy and rumour.

I think that we should get behind our own local paper to ensure its survival. The Munster Express is owned and run by Waterford people, there is no Rupert Murdoch.

blueboy123

jmcc wrote: »

The paper itself is continuing. It is just the print side of things that is being outsourced according to the report.

Regards...jmcc

Oh yeah I knew that, but with it losing so many staff is very sad! Wonder will the size, supplements etc be reduced too?

mike65

Silverado wrote: »

I’m glad someone pointed out that it’s not gone, it’s just having to rationalise its costs.

I think that a local paper which has been in existence for 150 years should be supported by all of us. If we allow the newer forms of news media such as Twitter and Facebook take over from this type of established reporting then we are embarking on a slippery slope. These are usually uncorroborated and filled with hearsay and gossip. I prefer to live in the real world of fact not fantasy and rumour.

I think that we should get behind our own local paper to ensure its survival. The Munster Express is owned and run by Waterford people, there is no Rupert Murdoch.

Eh? What reporting? When did the Munster ever do anything other than the most basic "bog-cutting" hackery and PR re-writing? I must have missed the
in depth articles and 'shine a light' stories that win awards.

Remember old Smokey Joes holiday articles? That's just about the level the Munster occupies.

jmcc

mike65 wrote: »

Eh? What reporting? When did the Munster ever do anything other than the most basic "bog-cutting" hackery and PR re-writing? I must have missed the
in depth articles and 'shine a light' stories that win awards.

It is amazing how people just don't understand the different forms of journalism. The local newspapers tend to make a lot of money from BDM or Births, Deaths and Marriages. Then come the classified adverts. The shift from print to online for classifieds and for general news over the last twenty years or so has impacted all local level newspapers and has even hit the nationals. Strangely the BDM sites have not done well on the web because of the local aspect.

Remember old Smokey Joes holiday articles? That's just about the level the Munster occupies.

Compared to some of the sh!te that passes for "journalism" in the Oirish Times or the Sindo today, they were masterpieces of travel reportage. Remember they were from a time when most people did not travel outside of Ireland for their holidays. He also covered each of the Olympics from the 1940s up to the 1980s I think.

The local newpapers aren't about national issues except when they impinge on local events.

Regards...jmcc

jmcc

blueboy123 wrote: »

Oh yeah I knew that, but with it losing so many staff is very sad! Wonder will the size, supplements etc be reduced too?

Don't know. Supplements tend to be advertising driven and, I think, if they can't get the advertising then they won't run the particular supplement. Many of the broadsheet newspapers have moved to tabloid size but the biggest problem that I can see is the rise of Waterford Today. It has a greater coverage and it is free.

Regards...jmcc

Psychedelic

mike65 wrote: »

Eh? What reporting? When did the Munster ever do anything other than the most basic "bog-cutting" hackery and PR re-writing? I must have missed the
in depth articles and 'shine a light' stories that win awards.

Remember old Smokey Joes holiday articles? That's just about the level the Munster occupies.

Do you expect cutting edge journalism or something? It's the Munster Express not the New York Times. Let's face it, not much happens in Waterford so I don't know what you expect from a local paper beyond reporting the local news, and I think they do a decent job of that. And it's not like they have loads of money to spend on more/better journalists.

Sully

A lot of people compare it to the News & Star, and feel that the level of news is much higher and indepth than the Munster. People feel that while the munster is around so long, N&S has always given more indepth and bigger coverage. Similarly did the Waterford People, went along the N&S style.

I wouldn't think Waterford Today is much competition, its a advert paper with little news.

mike65

jmcc and Psychedelic seems to have taken my comment up a bit wrong. I was responding to Silverado comment which seemed to suggest The Munster was all that was between hard news and total social media led anarchy.

Of course its not going to produce anything of any note, break a story or hold anyone to account. Its a local rag, not Ben Bradlee Washington Post.

jmcc

Sully wrote: »

A lot of people compare it to the News & Star, and feel that the level of news is much higher and indepth than the Munster. People feel that while the munster is around so long, N&S has always given more indepth and bigger coverage. Similarly did the Waterford People, went along the N&S style.

Well the N&S has the benefit of filler articles from the Examiner. The Waterford People wasn't really a player and was more like a Sindonista/media studies graduates type effort at a local newspaper. Loads of pics and little else.

I wouldn't think Waterford Today is much competition, its a advert paper with little news.

That's why you don't know about publishing Sully. It is very hard to beat FREE. It has coverage of most of the Munster and News & Star's target market and it is free. Readers have to pay for the Munster or N&S. This coverage makes it a serious threat. Every advert in Waterford Today is potentially a lost customer for the Munster Express or N&S. Newspapers, especially at the local level, are advertising driven moreso than journalism driven.

Regards...jmcc

abouttobebanned

They should have a weekly supplement called "up on the roof". A weekly page documenting what head cases have gone mad on a roof this week.

Seriously though...we mustn't be too far away from living in a world with 1 newspaper per country.

jmcc

mike65 wrote: »

Of course its not going to produce anything of any note, break a story or hold anyone to account.

<rant>On a local level, it probably has and probably will. Referring to newspapers as "rags" is all very Front Page [1] but the local newspapers are probably far better at news than the Oirish Times or the Sindo. This is why the local newspapers have always provided a training ground for national journalists to learn their craft. This changed somewhat during the Celtic Tiger when degree mills started churning out PR flacks (journalism graduates) who were too stupid to get into banking or auctioneering. As a result, the Irish media is largely filled with the journalistic equivalent of pondscum recycling press releases as journalism while the broadsheets give space to windbaggers to spew their cluelessness while news reporting withers. This is why some of the Irish national newspapers are in financial trouble and losing readers each day. </rant>

Regards...jmcc
[1] A newspaper movie rather than the Microsoft web design software.

Sully

jmcc wrote: »

Well the N&S has the benefit of filler articles from the Examiner. The Waterford People wasn't really a player and was more like a Sindonista/media studies graduates type effort at a local newspaper. Loads of pics and little else.

I don't read them much but the N&S just seems to have more news and articles compared to the Munster. Iv always thought that you got more news from the N&S. The Waterford People might have survived, didn't their parent company cut down on most of their national papers including Waterford? It wasn't a bad effort but its hard to crack into Waterford I would imagine.

That's why you don't know about publishing Sully. It is very hard to beat FREE. It has coverage of most of the Munster and News & Star's target market and it is free. Readers have to pay for the Munster or N&S. This coverage makes it a serious threat. Every advert in Waterford Today is potentially a lost customer for the Munster Express or N&S. Newspapers, especially at the local level, are advertising driven moreso than journalism driven.

Regards...jmcc

There is very very little news in the Waterford Today compared to the other mainstream papers though, so that's why you would go ahead and buy the others. Its been like that for years.

Silverado

mike65 wrote: »

jmcc and Psychedelic seems to have taken my comment up a bit wrong. I was responding to Silverado comment which seemed to suggest The Munster was all that was between hard news and total social media led anarchy..

"Media led anarchy" is taking my argument a little too far. My point is that we need as much professional journalism in our media to counteract the misinformation common on social networking sites. This thread itself is an example of it how some contributors get it wrong. They were under the impression that the Munster Express is closing down. We now know that this is far from the truth.

We need our local media and its journalists.

jmcc

Sully wrote: »

I don't read them much but the N&S just seems to have more news and articles compared to the Munster. Iv always thought that you got more news from the N&S. The Waterford People might have survived, didn't their parent company cut down on most of their national papers including Waterford? It wasn't a bad effort but its hard to crack into Waterford I would imagine.

Well they had to compete with two existing newspapers and one free one. They hadn't a chance. The Murdoch approach would have been to go in low cost or free and drive others out of the market. The problem was that this doesn't really work in a local market and the parent company didn't have the funds to try it.

There is very very little news in the Waterford Today compared to the other mainstream papers though, so that's why you would go ahead and buy the others. Its been like that for years.

That's the idea. It is an advertising publication and news takes up space unless it is advertorial or ad related. WT is free so people don't have to pay for it and if they are looking for something, it is to hand. It gets to most of the market for free and as such it can hit one of the main revenue streams of the paid newspapers. The key element is that you don't have to pay for Waterford Today.

Regards...jmcc