Trinity Mirror’s Kent division is the latest part of the company to come under the axe with 13 editorial jobs set to go.
There will be six redundancies, none of which are expected to be compulsory, and a further seven job losses through non-replacement of staff. The cuts include three photographers, two sports writers and one editor.
The company declined to reveal which titles were affected. The division includes the Medway News, Folkestone Herald, East Kent Gazette and Maidstone News.
A Trinity Mirror spokesman said: “Kent Regional Newspapers is moving to a modern publishing structure, with benefits for individual members of staff and the company. The changes will allow us to focus funds and effort on providing the best possible newspapers for our readers.
“The reorganisation will have a number of major benefits for KRN journalists, including more clearly defined career paths and consistent working patterns.
“It will also free up editors to concentrate on their core role – editing newspapers. They’ll have more time to focus on newsgathering, more time to get out into their communities and more time to train their young journalists.”
The move is the latest in a series of editorial cuts across Trinity Mirror since chief executive Sly Bailey announced her strategic review of the company last July. At the time she said there would be 550 job cuts across the company and said she was willing to tackle the “sacred cow” of editorial costs.
Since then 18 jobs have been shed at the regionals’ division head office and more than 70 have gone at the Daily Mirror. In October, 16 editorial cuts were were announced at the Birmingham Post and Mail and the following month 21 editorial redundancies were revealed at the Western Mail and Echo group.
Also in October, Trinity Mirror announced plans to replace five editors working on weeklies in its Midland Weekly Media division with two group editors and two new sub-editors.
By Dominic Ponsford
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