Twenty jobs are under threat at the Bristol Evening Post after it announced it will scrap its Saturday edition and become a five-day operation from next month.
The paper is also dropping ‘Evening’ from its name and will be known simply as ‘The Post’from 19 April, which owners Northcliffe said reflected its transition to morning publication in June 2009.
Under the new plans an extended Friday edition with a weekend guide for Bristol will be launched and sister-title the Western Daily Press will ‘offer readers an alternative on Saturday”.
Other changes include Northcliffe’s Venue magazine becoming a digital-only product, though listings and review content will be used in the Friday Post, the Bristol Observer and the local edition of Metro.
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Folio magazine, currently jointly produced with Venue, will remain as a stand-alone monthly.
The May edition of Venue/Folio will be the last in its current form and Dave Higgitt, Venue publishing director, will leave the business next month, said Northcliffe
Bristol News and Media publisher Alan Renwick said: ‘We have undertaken an exhaustive review of our portfolio and the changing needs of readers and advertisers in our market.
‘These planned changes give us a more focused and flexible set of publications which are much more closely aligned to our customers and give us a better platform for future growth.”
Northcliffe said a total of 20 positions are at risk of redundancy as a result of the proposed changes but it not yet clear how many are in editorial.
The most recent ABC figures for the Post, covering the last six months of December 2011, show circulation was down 9.2 per cent to 36,262.
In 2009 Northcliffe axed around 45 editorial jobs at the Post and the Western Daily Press, after cutting 36 journalists when it largely merged the two Bristol-based dailies in 2005.
Today’s announcement by Northcliffe is similar to plans unveiled for the Ipswich Star by rival publisher Archant in January.
Formerly the Ipswich Evening Star, the paper also dropped ‘Evening’ from its title and scrapped its Saturday edition with the loss of 14 editorial jobs.
In its place Archant launched an Ipswich edition of sister-title the East Anglian Daily Times ‘to provide an alternative read for regular Star readers”.
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