INM Let 30 More Staff Go, "Centralise Operations"

JTMan

INM announces changes to editorial structure at its newspapers

http://www.rte.ie/news/business/2015/0129/676496-inm-editorial-changes/

No mention of the Irish Daily Star ...

This would see most reporters write stories for The Irish Independent, Evening Herald, Sunday Independent, Sunday World or Independent.ie – rather than being assigned to a single publication.

What exactly does this mean? How do you share printing?

Aside from editorial changes, INM also said that print production would become a shared service for all titles in order to increase efficiencies.

30 jobs to go ...

Up to 30 jobs will be cut as part of the cost-cutting measures, and employees were told a voluntary redundancy package would be introduced as part of this.

IRE60

JTMan wrote: »

What exactly does this mean? How do you share printing?

They said "print production" - thats the pre-press side - taking your pages, compiling them. making them into quads/ doubles and sending to a rip to be made into plates for the press. It might be scaled down (numerically) to facilitate all the print titles.

JTMan wrote: »

No mention of the Irish Daily Star .

Yes, indeed..... my conspiracy theory only gathers momentum.

JTMan

The Irish Times have more on the redundancies here. There is a mention of the Irish Daily Star ...

The company is “very, very happy” to retain its interest in Irish Daily Star publisher Independent Star Ltd, a joint venture with Northern & Shell, he added. “We look forward to a long future with it.”

Translation: We left the Irish Daily Star out of these plans because it's future is far from secure. We will be squeezing a little more blood out of it before we send in the hounds.

Mr Pitt, who joined INM from Tesco, said he expected print circulation would further decline, but that there would still be some form of printed newspaper in 10 years’ time. “It might be different paper, it might be a different size.”

Translation: We know the industry is fecked, circulation is going down the toilet. We still hope to have one newspaper in 10 years time, the Indo, it will be a few pages of copy and pasted wire stories in a magazine format.

There are no plans for a digital paywall “at this moment”, Mr Pitt said, adding that he couldn’t comment on the long-term strategy.

Translation: Hardly anyone will pay for our rags online.

“no risk or threat” to the company’s four “crown jewel” national newspaper titles

Translation: We are closing some of the regionals soon.

bogmanfan

It's sad to see them hasten the demise of the titles by trying to squeeze every last ounce out of them in such a short time. Denis has lost a lot of money on his shares since he bought in, and he's just trying to recoup as much as possible before pulling the plug. I feel sorry for those who will be let go, but worse for those who have to stay.

IRE60

The article in the Times is radically different to the one that was there this morning!
Earlier it was a little bitter, signing off that the two page statement never mentioned the word journalist once!
It wasn't a deal beaker for me. But it's really rushing towards the unknown. I found an article by David Carr* of the NYT. Their vision is that you produce for the web, not exclusively, but on an hour by hour basis. Then, at the end of the day, you select from those stories, and fill a newspaper! It's a cultural shift in the extreme.

*carr stars in a doc/film called Page One about the NYT (pre massive investment in digital, but on the cusp of it) - it's a class bit of work from a media columnist. Well worth looking at and has some very stark bits in it.

IRE60

And is S Rea playing the lead support (I couldn't help it ... It's the name)